All posts by Chris

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 …

I 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 …

Heidi Allen MP in the House of Commons, 2 November 2017. In response to some right-winger making some typically appalling comment.

Seriously?

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 …

I 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 …

Not angry. Just bored.

I’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 …

So 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 …

It’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 …

I 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 …

If 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 …

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 …

I’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 …

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 …

The 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 …

So, 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 …

One 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 …

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 …

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 …

Here 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 …

Just 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 …

For 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 …

Summer 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 …

So, 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 …

I just noticed that the aerial views on Bing Maps are still showing the plot on which our house stands, before it was developed …so I thought I’d record them here for posterity. The old house really looks quite a …

You rarely see serious forecasts of the European elections on a regional (constituency) basis, mainly because the proportional voting system makes it much harder than “first past the post” systems. But I thought I’d take a look, spurred on by …