Me and my Guccis

Or should that be “My Guccis and I”? Whatever. “These boots were made for walkin’. Tell us about your favourite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.” Over the years, I’ve worn through a fair number of pairs of shoes. I can still remember some, so I suppose I must have been quite fond of…

Fandango’s Flashback Friday 15 August 2025

From August 2014, on the art of masterly inactivity. I can’t help it, I’m an analyst “Procrastination. What have you been putting off doing? Why?” We’ve talked about this before on this blog, albeit from a different perspective. So you could consider this as an update. A belated one, obviously. If – no, let’s be fair, when – I’m…

Laughter lines

“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…

Fandango’s Flashback Friday

From this day in 2014, a meditation on boredom… Shoot Me Now This one’s just too good to miss…(cracks knuckles; hunches over keyboard; ticks tags for ‘rants’ and ‘grumpy old man’). “(YAWN): What bores you?” Firstly, let’s be clear about what we actually mean by ‘boredom’. My first stab at finding a dictionary definition came…

Simon Schama’s Swampy Suck

Oh, hi there. I thought that might get your attention… Today’s instalment of ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ is: “Origin story. Why did you start your blog? Is that why you still blog, or has your site gone in a different direction than you’d planned?” It’s coming up for two years since I started this…

Must try harder

“State of your year. Write up a mid-year ‘State of my Year’ post.” Still alive, still married, still solvent. The rest is detail. No news is good news, but it doesn’t provide much meat for a new post. Instead, let’s look at how things are going in relation to the ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’…

Right first time

“Flip flop. Think of a topic or issue about which you’ve switched your opinion. Why the change? Nobody likes to admit they’re wrong and frankly it’s a little embarrassing to tell everyone (ha!) about how I couldn’t see the point of an iPad at all when they first came out. If you tried to take…

Faraway laughter

“Far from home. Tell us about the farthest you’ve ever travelled from home.” There’s a website – of course there is: did you really think there wouldn’t be? – that will tell you the precisely opposite position on the globe to wherever you are in the world. Useful to know. Thus it tells me that if, unaccountably, I…

(Still) Nothing to Declare

“Barter System. If the world worked on a barter system, how would you fare?” The latest instalment of ‘365 Days of Writing Prompts’ is actually a repeat of the Daily Prompt from exactly a year ago, which moved me to post the following piece. According to WordPress statistics, that particular little gem has only been…

Intimations of immortality

“No longer a mere mortal. You’ve imbibed a special potion that makes you immortal…How will you live life differently, knowing you’ll always be around to be accountable for your actions?” It’s not like me to turn down the offer of a drink, but I’d certainly think at least twice before taking a slug of this…