A Birds Nest

Love Them!

I don’t know much about common things, like how to have a Gastric band fitted, or how fast the planets go as they rotate and all that. But what I do know is just as important: Badgers get a raw deal. Not because they strongly resemble one of those black and white boiled sweets that you can’t buy anymore—make a comparison, they really actually do—but because of their fiendish, malevolent nature. Apparently. It’s rubbish of course, a complete load of More

Good Advice

I don’t sit at a table anymore when I travel on a train. I now have a very strict rule about that and will do absolutely anything to avoid it, including a) looking like a buffoon, b) paying someone to sit there for me (in desperate circumstances) and c) pretending I have ‘writer’s ass’, a condition which prohibits me from sitting on seats which have been hardened by a million unique pairs of buttocks. You may think that the worst More

5 Ways I Can Improve My Life

There are very few facets in my life right now that I am unhappy about and that need changing. I have a good job, a great wife, a great family, a good collection of friends, and I am reasonably healthy. But like everyone else, there are things I wish to improve in my life. Here are five ways I can improve my life, and I suspect several of these you will agree with in your own life.

1. Procrastination. Why More

A Man Without A Country, By Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut died a while ago, and it still makes me sad. In my mind, you should not even be able to apply for Secondary education job openings unless you have a good knowledge of his literature. If you don’t know his literature, there’s a good chance that his style of writing is the style for you: Vonnegut wrote with a sharp, caustic wit, his rants always derailing the argument he was trying to put across by going off at More

The Institution

There are so many rules in life, aren’t there? Rules which seem only there to upset and irritate. Rules which confound and question so much that getting out of bed and having a wee seems like too much of a chore. I know what you’re thinking: traffic rules, school rules, tax rules, bank rules–wife rules. The list is endless. Everything has rules, but there is also a good reason alongside all the dastardly ones put in place to basically rape, More

The perfect day - books and tunes!

I had a day off today and I’ve literally just finished reading the Wrong Boy by Willy Russell and I just have to say it was so brilliant! Seriously, one of the most uplifting and funny books I’ve read all year. It’s all about a character called Raymond who is basically a hapless teenage anti-hero type who has the worst luck in the world. My friend lent me this book after we watched Shirley valentine together which is also by More