Two pieces of bread and a whole load of turkey
I’m proud to say that I come from the home of the sandwich. You can’t beat a simple sandwich, freshly made with great bread and quality ingredients, and preferably accompanied by a bag of crisps. Admittedly the Earl of Sandwich probably didn’t go for cheese and Branston Pickle butties with an accompanying pile of cheese’n’onion [...]
Going back to school the expensive/American way
I never really minded going back to school when I was a kid. I lived a fair way from the rest of my schoolmates, so it was always good to catch up with friends. And besides, I always had a relatively immature fascination with getting a new pencil case, and filling it with HB pencils, [...]
I come from a land down under
Having tired of the geographical incorrectness of calling me a shandy drinking southerner, She Who Was Born To Worry has now taken to calling me her ‘Yank son’. Not that she actually has another son and needs to differentiate us as a result. Although there has been talk of an elusive half-brother called Eric (the [...]
Life’s too short to deal with cable companies
Once upon a time, I used to work in the murky world of cable and satellite television. How the channels I worked for ever got to air I’m not sure, given that they were almost entirely populated by 25 year olds in their first jobs and with a near-universal penchant for binge drinking. And that [...]
The Great American Conversational Disaster
My ability to waste away hours upon end talking non-stop about very little is the stuff of legend. If Inane Chat was an Olympic sport, I’d have played an integral role in the triumphant Team GB homecoming from Beijing at Heathrow earlier today. Arguably the title of Sir Brit Out Of Water would have been [...]
365 days out of water
I’ve finally made it to a whole year out of water. That’s 365* days of living with The Special One, 365 days of working in the United States, and 365 days of thinking “blimey, what just happened to me?!”
So, other than 365 days, what other 365s has the last year held for me?
365 times that [...]
The campaign for the abolition of taxi talking starts here
Getting into a cab in New York is generally like entering a little yellow bubble. Sure, there might be a slightly musky smell from the previous passenger, or the driver’s lunchtime burger/kebab/sag paneer, but on the whole drivers keep themselves to themselves. Most drivers are too engrossed in impenetrable conversations with various family members, and [...]
It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay
I’ve been a music fan for as long as I can remember. From listening to the Muppets album at my grandmother’s house as a five year old, through to playing a cassette of the soundtrack from Electric Dreams, and on to my first live gig (Heart, if you must know - credibility was a distant [...]
Is this a man I see before me?
Back in the day, I used to be a man about (London) town. Snake Hips Allen and myself used to go to the opening of the envelope as long as there was the vague promise of a free beer and a couple of lukewarm canapes. And even if there wasn’t, we could generally be persuaded [...]
I’d like to apologise unreservedly
It’s wryly amusing seeing that the Evening Standard has been forced to apologise to Prince Philip for wrongly claiming that he was fighting prostate cancer. Not because of the nature of the illness that the Queen’s husband absolutely and categorically does not have, but just because it’s rare to hear a story that’s not about [...]
