Between the 2006 and 2012, with the help of others, I re-established and ran a local colt’s cricket team that featured my eldest son, his friends and other lads from around the area. When we started, it was all a bit of a laugh really, but as the boys grew stronger and their motor skills began to click in to place, the whole thing became irrationally competitive and obsessive, not just for me but also for many of the parents (the male ones ...
You have to admit that politics as a subject has suffered from major apathy in recent years. There have been two major parties who have been squabbling over the ground of middle England for at least a decade now and it gets to the point where you can't calculate who is positioned where. It is fair to say that there are Tories who are almost left of centre and New Labour politicians passing them like ships in the night; it is really confusing ...
I love learning different words, there are so many that I either neglect or didn’t even know existed; it is a never ending list. Apparently the English Dictionary carries 171,476 words in current use, 47,156 that are obsolete and 9,500 words that are derivative and included as sub-entries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest are made up of exclamations, conjunctions, ...
For some reason, this week I have spent much of my time observing the language of fellow humans and how it affects the way they converse and gets them through the day. You should really do this yourselves, it is great fun, because it soon becomes apparent how reliant we are on sarcasm, idioms and black humour, even in the most basic of conversations.
Sarcasm and irony is the staple diet in conversations throughout offices, pubs and clubs, ...
A funny thing happened to me the other day (well actually it wasn't funny as in ha! ha!). It was when I was in the process of discussing with a car salesman the possibility of breaking down the barriers of frugality that has halted any personal extravagance since the the 2008 financial crash.
As I put down the phone with my mind still not made up, I had a knock on my door and I was greeted with the news that my neighbour, aged 40, had ...