Bloganuary Day 5: Really? Only day 5? What is something you wish you knew how to do? Hmmm. Tricky. I can think of plenty of things I wish I could do better. Speak French, for a start; cook; take photographs. The list is almost endless because pretty much anything I can do could be done…
Bloganuary Day 4 – hanging in there What was your favourite toy as a child? Although I was obviously too young to remember, apparently my favourite toy when I was just a baby was a teddy bear called ‘Growly’*, so named because if you squeezed his belly he….well, growled. At least he did until I…
Day 3 of ‘Bloganuary’: still sticking to it. Write about the last time you left your comfort zone Believe me, I know exactly when I was last out of my comfort zone. I am pleased to report that I spend the vast majority of my life firmly entrenched inside my comfort zone, for three excellent…
Day 2 of ‘Bloganuary’ What is a road trip you would love to take? In the current circumstances, even a weekly trip to the supermarket counts as something of an adventure and it’s not at all obvious when that’s going to change. Nonetheless, Madame and I do have wider ambitions in terms of places to…
For this week’s ‘Show’ theme, I was going to use ‘The Music Never Stopped’ by the Grateful Dead, but looking back I saw that I’d already deployed that over three years ago. So instead I came up with this song by the British group Renaissance – folk-rock favourites of mine back in the early seventies…
[I start 2022 with every good intention of completing the January post-per-day ‘Bloganuary’ challenge. I seem to recall I’ve tried this kind of thing before and never even got to the end of the first week, but you never know…] “What advice would you give to your teenage self?” I haven’t been a teenager for…
I have to admit that this week’s theme for Song Lyric Sunday had me stumped for a while: anger, rage, fury – all very festive. Nothing came to mind. Eventually, I resorted – which I very rarely do for this blog – to throwing a cent or two into the ‘Keep Larry Page rich’ fund…
Some of us are old enough to remember when what we now call ‘old-fashioned’ telephones were the only electronic communication devices available, they were probably attached to a wall and their mobility was thus purely a function of how long the receiver cord was. Happy days. Of course there are very many songs about, or…
Songs with nonsense lyrics are what’s called for this week. I shall spare you all the appalling ‘Agadoo’ (look it up if you must, but don’t blame me) to focus instead on these odd lyrics from a Beatles song that featured in an odd made-for-television film called, of course, ‘Magical Mystery Tour’. This film was…
This week the theme for Song Lyric Sunday is houses and rooms in a house. As soon as I saw the word ‘attic’ my thoughts went straight to this simply gorgeous song from the 1970 album ‘American Beauty’. Noting that Jim himself had chosen something else, I had no hesitation in offering up this dreamy,…
the only deadhead in the hameau 