They flog horses – don’t they?
The writer of Ecclesiastes observed that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong – but he’d probably never tried to buy tickets online… Read more »
A Taste of India – possibly
When the first dedicated Indian restaurant – the Hindoostanee – was opened in London in 1809 by an enterprising immigrant called Dean Mahomed, it boasted of “Indian dishes, in the highest… Read more »
Always leave them wanting more…
I can’t really understand the appeal of ‘binge-watching’ – viewing a complete tv series (or box-set) in one sitting. This is clearly an example of the modern desire for instant… Read more »
Battersea’s Patron Saint?
So far the only saint with any Battersea connections seems to be Saint Ethelburga, who was probably just visiting her brother Saint Erkenwald, Bishop of London who may have… Read more »
Water water everywhere – in bottles at least
There may not be life on Mars but it’s just been confirmed that there is water – a whole underground lake of it around 12 miles across. But it’s probably… Read more »
I Go – I Come Back!
“I go – I come back” was one of the phrases born out of the whimsically surreal and satirical radio series It’s That Man Again (ITMA) which entertained wartime and… Read more »
Phew what a scorcher…
The famous headline apparently was never used in quite quite that form which is a bit of a blow, but it’s certainly been quoted as such ever since. And (as… Read more »
A tale of many sandwiches
The other day we found a traditional sandwich in a London pub. Not in some far corner of the east end but at a pub in Mayfair. There it was… Read more »
The Deadly Tale of the tortoise, the aubergine and the conductor’s baton
Tim Dowling in his Weekend world column in the Guardian recently wrote about his wife’s tortoise: In the 23 years we lived at our old house the tortoise was… Read more »
Blue is the colour….
David Mitchell commented in the Observer on 1 April 2018: ‘I liked the old passports too, though not primarily because of their colour, but because they were bigger and had a… Read more »