I found this story astonishing. In the year of my birth, about a mile from where I lived, a teenage girl was being sectioned under the mental health act for the crime of having a baby. That boy, a few months older than me, was adopted, and has never known his mother. I thought this… Continue reading In this day and age
An interesting example of how stories are distorted in the telling, and how ‘news’ is created. Yesterday, at my place of work, there was a power cut. It happened around lunch time. I went out of my office to see if it was just my room, or more general. It was quickly apparent that the… Continue reading Chinese Whispers
Playing around with Blogger’s new templates. I like this look – clean, I think.
In 1970-71, I had a Saturday job at a grocer’s on Oldham Street, Manchester. The shop, and the small chain it belonged to – Maypole – have long gone, of course, but when I bought some CDs yesterday, I was reminded of it. My wage, for a nine-hour day, was 25s, (£1.25) less 5d for… Continue reading The sublime Ella
Great snap of a foxy traveller.Credit: RadioKate
Just a quick post to say that I’ve enabled a new widget called Apture, which should produce lots of multi-media links at the click of a mouse, as MC Desmo says.
I suppose blogging is a kind of vanity publishing. There’s no quality control – I can write what I like. But the main difference between Topsyturvydom and some execrable self-published collection of poems is that I can, to some extent, control the reaction to it. After all, an author publishing in the usual way is… Continue reading Trolls
If you wake up to Radio 4, then you will enjoy this. If you don’t, you’ll have no idea what is so amusing about this film…
A colleague (thanks Anthony!) drew my attention to this rant from Susan Hill. It’s not the first time she has expressed her views on this topic, and doubtless won’t be the last as long as GCSE and A level students see the reading of books as a chore to be got through as painlessly as… Continue reading Reading as a chore
On the train to Stafford yesterday, the announcement for each stop went:“We will shortly be arriving at Stoke. Stoke is the next stopping station on this service today”How is this better than “The next stop is Stoke”?