I’m an FA Cup traditionalist, and I wouldn’t want to see major changes in the format (and especially the ‘feel’) of the competition. I’ve hated the destruction of the Final as an event, by playing it at a stupid time …
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Explanation: I’m not a Dr Who uber-fan, and I’m well aware that if you ask ten fans for a list of the best stories, you’ll get ten very different lists. But despite that, I wanted to watch the best stories, …
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This post lists what I’ve found out about parking at the Greenwich, London O2 Arena (the old Millennium Dome), and my experience of event parking there. I hope it’s useful, and please use the comments to add anything …
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★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
It’s easy to start by saying “another year, another Cambridge Folk Festival”, but this wasn’t “just another one”; it was the one that followed the two abandoned years.
Continuity is important for a festival reliant …
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I was asked to put together an easy picture quiz for a local organisation to print out and use at a Queen’s Platinum Jubilee event. Here it is, in case you want to use it yourself. It features people who’ve …
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Everyone will have seen the ‘league table since Christmas’ and we’re all quite aware that for Town it was a season of two halves. But I thought I’d look into the numbers a bit more deeply across the division.
For …
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What a horrible start to the year. Overall –8.1%, the worst month since I started keeping detailed monthly records a couple of years ago. Just the commodity funds showing any signs of life, and even dependables like Halma turning in …
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A popular item for after our Christmas dinner! People always ask for a copy, so here it is (below, click for printable PDF). All you need to do is to identify the faces who have been in the news in …
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A recommendation here for Mike (Michael) McDonnell, a personal trainer based in Braintree but working all over Essex and even in London.…
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Just thought I’d add my son’s natty new investment blog to the list of sites I recommend here. Brave of him to put his investments out in the open like this – I tend to keep mine to myself! I …
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What’s not to like about this? A crowdsourced playlist of decent Christmas songs on Spotify that won’t make half of the room groan when they start playing. Thanks to all who contributed. Featuring (at the time of uploading) Alison Krauss …
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“When you’re trying to find tweets about a specific topic on your timeline, it can be a nightmare sorting through all the tweets from friends, celebrities, news sources, and everyone else you follow on Twitter. While you can search Twitter …
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I hate it when people post on Twitter: “Here’s my list of the best…, what’s yours?”, because I simply can’t resist.
… Continue reading****GREATEST NO. 1 POLL****
As you all know, the only good music is CHART MUSIC with No.1 hit singles
A roundup of the decade appears to be compulsory for anyone who’s so much as commented on a film in the last few years, so here’s my contribution! This is not a list of the ‘best’ films I’ve seen – …
Continue readingDecember 2019
Always popular at our Christmas party, this one, and people always ask for a copy, so here it is (below, click for printable PDF). All you need to do is to identify the faces who have been in …
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My son did his Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) in 2018, at Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge, and it was really interesting to watch. For something worth just half an A-level (and in reality when it comes to university applications, …
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A few websites I feel obliged to recommend to you, mainly because I had a hand in making them.…
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Getting better! My last few years’ totals of new films viewed have been 46, 52, 61 and now 73. Beating that is going to be quite the challenge in 2019.…
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I was nerdy enough to get on Twitter really early on (August 2007), as @CherryHintonBlu. Quite a few even more curious people had been there before me, as I was only user ID number 8,015,922. Here’s my first Tweet (Twitter …
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Please Note: this year’s (2019) “Faces Of The Year” Printable Christmas Picture Quiz will be published on Monday 23 December. Sorry it’s late, but so is our Christmas party this year. If you like the look of last year’s quiz …
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I always enjoy compiling end-of-year lists. For the past few years I’ve added all the new music I like to a Spotify playlist, then selected my favourite songs from that year’s list to make a top 10, or 20. It’s …
Continue readingI made up a quick quiz for our Christmas party last night, and one or two people asked if they could have copies to recycle at their own gatherings, so here it …
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Heidi Allen MP in the House of Commons, 2 November 2017. In response to some right-winger making some typically appalling comment.
Another year, another Cambridge Folk Festival – our 27th in succession, by current reckoning. Many people have been going far longer: it really is an institution. I’m not a huge folk music fan, just a local resident who loves the …
Continue readingI once tried to explain the parliamentary electoral system to a teenage relative, using footballing terms. It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s a lot more perfect than the way we choose our government.
“Imagine we’re having an election to …
Continue readingI’ve had a season ticket at Portman Road since 1974, apart from a few years when I was away at university. For the first few years I went with a schoolmate and we both stood on …
Continue readingSo for the fifth year running, every time I came across some new music I liked in the last 12 months I added it to a ‘best of the year’ Spotify playlist. And for the third year running, the list …
Continue readingIt’s that time again. Absolutely delighted to report that after several years of trying, and always narrowly failing, I managed to watch 52 new release films at the cinema this year. Here then are my 10 favourites, and the rest …
Continue readingI made up a quick quiz for our Christmas party last night, and one or two people asked if they could have copies to recycle at their own gatherings, so here it …
Continue readingIf you haven’t seen it yet, the Cambridge Independent is a major new weekly newspaper for the area. I’ve really put this blog post up because a month after its launch, the newspaper still hasn’t managed to get Google to …
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Earlier this year I was part of a small group which organised a hustings event for a local council election here in Cambridge. We think it was a great success, and a real asset to local democracy. One or two …
Continue readingI’m writing this in the aftermath of the EU membership referendum, and the result is still very raw. I’m probably not alone around here in having almost all of my friends, colleagues and neighbours having voted ‘remain’, and not having …
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Denmark: makes the news in May.
I’m sure that some of you may take these predictions for 2016 and somehow make money out of them, because they’re guaranteed**, but nevertheless, on this new year’s day, I’m going to tell you …
Continue readingThe Christmas After-Lunch Picture Quiz has become a bit of a tradition in our family, and I thought I’d post this year’s here on the blog so that if any of you …
Continue readingSo, I didn’t manage to see 52 new cinema-release movies this year, despite the best of intentions. To date I’ve seen 47, although there may be time for one or two more, if our local cinema can afford to stop …
Continue readingOne of the joys of streaming audio is that you can listen to new music all year long and just file away anything you particularly like into a “best of the year”playlist. Here it is on Spotify if you fancy …
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I’ve found in the past that relating travel and parking experiences here always seems to be useful to people, so here’s another one, this time relating to parking at Stanmore for Wembley Stadium events. This was something we tried in …
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This is a poem by Paul Cookson (above), who I’ve had the pleasure of seeing perform, and who once inspired my son when doing one of those school visits which so many authors undertake. I hope Paul won’t mind me …
Continue readingHere in Cambridge’s Queen Edith’s ward, we consider ourselves to be very much part of the city, so it’s strange that the parliamentary boundary of the Cambridge constituency rather oddly puts us outside of the city. Unsurprisingly, folks round …
Continue readingJust in time! I set myself the extremely ambitious target of watching 52 movies released in 2014 during the year, and made it by binge-watching (for me) four movies in four days up to New Year’s Eve. Admittedly my target …
Continue readingFor the last couple of years I’ve managed to come up with a top 100 songs of the year, but (disturbingly), I couldn’t find 100 I really like this year. To be fair, with three weeks of the year to …
Continue readingSummer 2014…
We’re just back from a fabulous 14-day cruise around the Baltic on Celebrity Eclipse and for the benefit of future cruise passengers planning their trip, I thought I’d do a quick port guide. Of course, your exact itinerary …
Continue readingSo, with the help of a Cineworld Unlimited card, my target this year has been to see one film a week on the big screen. Not too much of a hardship, and at the halfway stage I’ve nearly done …
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