Hail to the Sprout
The secular images on Christmas cards haven’t changed an awful lot over the years: Father Christmas (or Santa as he increasingly gets called) still makes plenty of appearances, along with… Read more »
Category: Nostalgia
Frying tonight…
Sometimes i feel like a priest in a fish & chip queue quietly thinking as the vinegar runs through how nice it would be to buy a supper for two. Vinegar by Roger McGough As English… Read more »
Eyeballs in the sky
My mum and dad didn’t talk about politics much – I was introduced to socialism by my maternal grandad – a retired railwayman, and a socialist to his fingertips. He… Read more »
What’s in a name?
I answered quite happily to the name Michael until I was about thirteen when I decided I’d prefer to be known as Mike. If nothing else it was quicker to write and easier to spell. My… Read more »
On the back of an envelope…
When I was about fifteen – living in Somerset – I discovered penfriends. I can’t remember much about any of them and the long distance relationship was generally very short-lived…. Read more »
Salad Days
Sir John Evelyn, best known for his diary, was also a vegetarian and a fan of salads and would hopefully have approved of the salad pictured above. His 1699 book… 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 »
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 »
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 »