"We understand that mistakes happen...!" The headline on the ad is quite eye catching. Underneath it is a picture of an unattractive larger woman, with bright blonde, straw like hair, and dark roots showing through. She is sitting on the side of a bed, wearing a diamanté studded bra top. In the blurred background, a... Continue Reading →
Up – the most depressing film ever made
Last Saturday, my brother in law opened up his extensive DVD library, and asked us what we wanted to watch. It had been a slightly wistful day playing around in cold rock pools in Devon, which always makes me miss the heat and the colours of Australia. I wanted mindless entertainment that bore no relation... Continue Reading →
Annoying things
This will be my last post on this blog. Due to a mixup with my Google settings, my real name is now linked to the blog, and the blog appears as the top search result. Given that my real name appears to be unique, this means that everyone I sit in a boring meeting with... Continue Reading →
Envy politics
London tube strikes are always amusing. The streets swarm with a variety of tourists holding the hilarious belief they will be able to hail a taxi, commuters who have decided they're on safari and wander round with big backpacks and integrated hydration systems, and of course the hobby cyclists who try to get themselves killed... Continue Reading →
A view from the bridge
I don't get to go the theatre very often any more. I sometimes miss it, but given it means I don't see my baby for a whole day, there is even more pressure for it to be worth it than that engendered by the cost of the tickets. So a play really needs to have... Continue Reading →
Family travel roundup
I'm not sure travelling with small babies really counts as travelling. You don't lose yourself, breaking links with the everyday to go on a little daydream of difference; you're rather reminded how much babies like having their own familiar things around them, and how difficult they are when they don't. For Easter, we drove to... Continue Reading →
Selfishly living in the moment
History proves that intelligence is no bar to narrow minded bigotry. I always like to think that exponents of any kind of extreme ideology just be stupid and ill educated, but the Cambridge spies prove me wrong. They were all intelligent, and all decided that not only was communism worth dying for, but it was... Continue Reading →
Why does every group have a gremlin?
Right now, I am doing a correspondence course in Agile Project Management with Scrum. It's the same as most IT training courses, managing to be both obvious and a bit complicated to implement in practice. There are about twelve people attending in person, and three people sitting around in the countryside somewhere, who are required to... Continue Reading →
Babies in Burbage
Since I mostly failed to take any photos, here'a brief account of our baby's first "climbing trip". We left Milton Keynes at 8 am, as planned. We were going to pick up a friend and her baby from Sheffield, but our car is a little too small for three adults and two baby seats, so... Continue Reading →
Dumb stuff sleep deprivation does
When I was a teenager, I quite regularly forgot things, or lost things around the place. One time, I left my bag on a bench in Stratford-on-Avon, because my friends suggested going to Mcdonalds's, which was so exciting I jumped up and left without thinking. A tramp shuffled off furtively shortly afterwards. It was so... Continue Reading →
The resting writer 