Song Lyric Sunday: New Wave – ‘Psycho Killer’

“When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed” This week’s genre for Song Lyric Sunday is New Wave. Well, I’ve a pretty good idea of what that means, although there’s a bit of a risk that it could slide into New Romantic. However, while a band like Spandau Ballet is clearly New Romantic,…

Song Lyric Sunday: Country – ‘Lay Lady Lay’

Yee haw. Genre of the week for song Lyric Sunday this time is ‘country’. I think I have a basic understanding of what that is. However, on further reflection there is a whole range of sub-genres, as with last week’s ‘Metal’ (but not like metal obviously). I would not say that I’m a great fan…

Song Lyric Sunday: Metal – ‘Welcome To The Jungle’

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday, the musical genre of choice is ‘Metal’. At least I didn’t have to look that one up, even though it’s not as straightforward as it seems: heavy metal? thrash metal? Saints preserve us, death metal? And even trickier – at what point does rock music become metal. Well, I…

Bloganuary: What is your preferred mode of travel?

At this stage of my life, and with the world in its current sorry state, to be perfectly honest, my ideal mode of transport would be armchair-based imagination. If that lacks a certain degree of ambition, then something along the lines of ‘Beam me up, Scotty’ would be good, but the technology isn’t there, unfortunately.…

Bloganuary: How do you define success?

I spent most of my working life as a financial analyst in the investment business. As my specialist subject was the European banking sector, I saw plenty of corporate restructurings being undertaken, with mixed success. The key question in such exercises, of course, is how to define success. When announcing restructurings, company managements must perforce…

Bloganuary: Has a book changed your life?

How many book blurbs have you seen which trumpet the claim that ‘this book will change your life’? Dozens, at least. And how many such books really have had a life-changing impact on you? One? Two? None? I can honestly say that there is no book (and I’ve read a fair few in my time)…

Bloganuary: How far back in your family tree can you go?

Tracing one’s ancestry has become quite the thing in recent years. I first started looking into mine more than twenty years ago while I was, in acting terms, ‘resting’. Or, to put it another way, unemployed. Back then, genealogy was a labour-intensive process that involved ploughing through fat, leather-bound registers of births, marriages and deaths…