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Thursday, 15 September 2016

Meanwhile, back on dry land I reflect on whether or not too substantial breakfasts should be subject to an EU directive: Jack Tar's diet might have been abysmal, but it did mean Britannia ruled the waves for several millennia (though I’m told the Dutch take a rather contrary view on the matter). Then there’s the matter of snapped photos and an accusation of insanity from my daughter (so to speak)

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First the good news I wasn’t seasick, not even a little. But then you don’t get too many storms in the Markenmeer north of Amsterdam, and wh...
Wednesday, 31 August 2016

Just killing time with a rant about tattoos . . . and then I get to hear John Scofield again

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I'm sitting in the Wetherspoon's in Heathrow's terminal 5 waiting for my flight which is not for another hour, and I find the be...
Tuesday, 23 August 2016

Recommended (for a second time): Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States. And I give Michelle a copy of it

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I’ve always been sceptical when folk talk of something changing their lives, a book, an encounter or whatever it might be, and I am not abou...
Sunday, 14 August 2016

Gomorrah, a few necessary comments. Very necessary comments

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After my last entry recommending Gomorrah as a great series to watch, and having watched two more episodes of the first series, I thought it...
Friday, 12 August 2016

Introducing Gomorrah, the TV series which has taken its place in my heart and which stands head and shoulders with Deadwood, The Sopranos and Damages. And I venture a slightly more personal entry, although I still don’t have the courage to go the whole hog

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After I’d seen all six series of the Sopranos twice (and bizarrely the sixth series was in two parts, so maybe there were seven series) as w...
Saturday, 30 July 2016

Merkel for the chop? Well, for about five minutes or at last as long as it took you to read a recent Daily Mail story. And ‘the will of the people’: just how bloody inconvenient is it going to become?

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Browsing as one does — OK, ‘as I do’ — browsing as one does the Daily Mail online website, I came across this story and it occurred to me ...
Saturday, 23 July 2016

OK, so which of the current stooges (one’s now dead) will cause the most havoc for us before breakfast? My money’s on Erdogan – Trump hasn’t yet grown a moustache

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This blogger likes to think he is not much given to hyperbole. Perhaps he is wrong. But watching Donald Trump strut the stage in Cleveland a...
Thursday, 21 July 2016

A few last words for no very good reason at all...

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I am writing this in the couryard - the 'smoking' couryard of The Horse in Moretonhampstead, pretty much the back of beyond on Darmo...
Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Spielberg gets just two cheers from me for his Berlin Wall epic, but klezmer music gets all three. A shtik naches

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It’s odd how, when and why thoughts come to you. Last night was the second in our concerts this time around, and we were at a wine chateau c...
Sunday, 17 July 2016

No, this honkey believes that blue men can’t always sing the whites and sometimes shouldn’t even try (but no, I’ve not crossed over to the LibDems, no sir, life’s far too short). As for Turkey – well, what did we expect from an apprentice dictator such as Erdogan? That last remark will pretty much mark my card. If he staged his own coup, he wouldn’t be the first, but then, if…

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There was a jokey question years ago, originally posed, I think, by Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Do-Dah Band – and, no, I wasn’t a regu...