20th Century
A History of Pop Music – Albums 1964
Featured Album: In Dreams This is a series of articles looking at albums from 1960 to whatever year we end up in. I will select a featured album for each year and the link for [more…]
Arts
America
The Eternal Triangle
Sit yourselves down, Puffins, pour yourself a large one, & harken to the sorry tale of a chorus girl, the son of a US railroad robber baron, and the murdered architect Stanford White, in a [more…]
20th Century
When We Was Fab – The Sydney Cricket Ground in the 1980s
40 or 50 years ago the SCG was probably the best place in the world to watch cricket. Sure Lord’s was more dignified and places like the MCG and Eden Gardens were bigger but this [more…]
Culture
Personal Situational Awareness
Anyone who’s ever taken a moment to watch animals in the wild – birds in particular, can’t fail to have noticed they are constantly on the lookout for danger and predators, and are always primed [more…]
19th Century
One Hundred Years Ago This Very Day
The ‘Grim up north’ trope reminds of Northern England’s story of endless decline. In reality, the region produced immense wealth through the likes of textiles, steel, coal and shipbuilding. Influential industrialists’ fortunes rivalled those in [more…]
Arts
Ivory Cutlery’s Day Off – We Need To Talk About Bordeaux
Greetings pop pickers (from the hot and steamy Côte d’Azur on the stunning Mediterranean coastline of southeastern France) and please be welcome to tonight’s Fabulously Flamboyant Friday and yet another of our groin-polished googlies from [more…]
Literature
Always Worth Saying’s review of a Question Time review
On last Thursday’s Makerfield edition of the ever-popular BBC Question Time, a lady in the audience prefaced her point by saying she watches the Fiona Bruce-chaired programme ‘all the time’. Is she after my job? [more…]
Arts
Jinnie’s Story, Book Nine – Chapter Thirty-Four
Jinnie collapsed on her bunk on the USS Jack H. Lucas and realised that she was both tired and hungry. But before anything else, she needed to clean her rifle and return it to the [more…]
Animals
A View From (The Little Plot Just By) The Greenhouse; The Manipulation Of “Britishness”
Since my last missive the weather’s taken a bit of a turn for the worse, but then it is summer in England. Some of the plants, as is the way with nature, are grateful for [more…]