As a general rule I deal with the day-to-day vagaries of modern life by, if not quite ignoring them, at least treating their impingements on my consciousness with what I like to think of as a placid stoicism. By and large, to use a modern idiom, IDGAF. Sometimes, though, only a rant can help. Like…
There are very few things I’d claim to know more than most about. This rather limits – to put it mildly – the range of possible responses to this recent Daily Prompt: “Take a complicated subject you know more about than most people, and explain it to a friend who knows nothing about it at all.”…
You have no idea how much of a struggle it’s been not to start this post with the word ‘So’. For that is our subject today, dear reader. More particularly, the increasingly pervasive practice of begiinning sentences with this poor, innocent syllable. To borrow another common modern usage: WTF? This has been going on for years now,…
A recent WordPress daily prompt enquired: “What are the things you do within 30 minutes of waking up to ensure your day gets off on the right foot?” In my case there are two essential tasks that must be performed. Of the first – and I do mean the first – nothing more needs to be…
I’ve always been attached to my hair – and thankfully my hair has always been attached to me. I was born yelling lustily and sporting a good headful of hair. Of course I don’t remember that but there’s an obvious parallel with my earliest memory, which was equally traumatic to me (although I suspect my mother…
All shopped out? Thought so. Even the most prosaic shopping expedition – to your local food supermarket, for example – can be a highly stressful experience. The problem of course, is the other shoppers. Obviously, the problem is worse during the holiday season as there are more of them about and they’re buying more stuff, but in truth your fellow shoppers…
I is useless. ‘Tell us something we don’t know’, you chorus. The archives of this blog are awash with examples of my general ineptitude when it comes to anything practical, chronicling my various struggles with duvet covers, flat-pack furniture and many of the other benefits of modern civilisation. However, this week I may have hit…
“Drawing the line. Can anything be funny, or are some things off limits?” A tricky one, this. Rather ironically, writing about humour isn’t inherently amusing. I skipped a recent daily prompt about political correctness (is it a useful concept, or does it stifle honest discussion?) because I could see this particular subject coming up, and I think…
“21st century citizen. Do you belong in this day and age? If you do, explain why – and if you don’t, when in human history would you rather be?” A bit tricky this one, because there’s good and bad today, and there was certainly both good and bad in the old days. In the interests of…
By Jean Le Bidon, Chief Investigative Reporter, ‘Le Quotidien de Faire-le-Dodo (87)’ A number of residents have recently contacted Le Quotidien, reporting increasingly strange behaviour by members of the English expatriate community. “it’s very odd” said Jean-Claude Gazole, cashier at the Trop-Cher-Essence petrol station on the old Limoges road, “but lately I’ve seen a lot of the rosbif flying…
the only deadhead in the hameau 