Ah yes, the good old days. You’d pop into the pub for a quiet pint and leave smelling like you’d spent the evening slow-roasting over a bonfire of Marlboro Lights. Clothes ruined, eyes stinging, lungs doing their best impression of a chimney.
You didn’t even have to smoke. Simply existing in the same room was enough. Then along came the smoking ban. And, rather inconveniently for nostalgia merchants, it worked.
Cleaner Air, Fewer ...
I finally got round to watching the new BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies, and I’ll be honest, I went in expecting worthy, slightly heavy drama.
It is indeed heavy. But it’s also very well done.
Many of us did the book at school. Basically, a group of boys crash on an island, no adults, and at first they try to do things with some kind of democratic order. Elect a leader. Keep a fire going. Make some simple rules. Then it all slowly ...
I’ve just finished watching Waiting for the Out on BBC One and it’s one of those series that quietly sneaks up on you rather than making a big song and dance about itself.
It’s a six-part drama set mainly inside a British prison. The main character is Dan Stewer, played by Josh Finan, who teaches philosophy to inmates. That might sound a bit right on and worthy, but it really isn’t. It turns out philosophy is a pretty good way of ...
I was feeling a bit rough before Christmas. A complex tooth extraction, ongoing tinnitus, and a general sense of fragility conspired to make me feel vulnerable, weak and for the first time, properly my age. Someone said to me that the real problem with getting ailments and taking longer to recover as we get older is that we’re not used to it, so we don’t know how to cope. Nailed it. For those of us from the “just get on with it” ...
I hear plenty of people tearing strips off the NHS. Yes, it has its flaws. It’s overstretched, underfunded, and sometimes feels like it runs on goodwill and duct tape—but here’s the truth. My recent experience was brilliant.
It all started in spring when I went deaf in my left ear. Like any self-respecting British man in denial of mortality, I panicked. Convinced it was a an electrical fault in my head or a brain spider, I booked an ...
