I had a very early start today as my baritone singing voice was required to provide some sort of entertainment at a wedding in South Wales. The octet had been hired to jump up and sing All You Need Is Love at the 'you may kiss the bride' moment just after the wedding vows, surprising the entire congregation. Well, surprising the entire congregation ( Read more... )

I didn't have a particularly restful night's sleep last night. In fact, after finally settling down way too late, I was awake again well over an hour before the time I'd actually planned to be awake. I didn't actually get up though, for I had no clue what I would have done at that time in the morning ( Read more... )

This afternoon, I wasn't in a great mood. I'm not going to go into the details here, suffice to say that I was being criticised over something that I didn't even realise I was supposedly doing wrong. In fact, I'm still not convinced I have done anything wrong but that's by the by. The upshot was that I was feeling decidedly miserable ( Read more... )

You know that web comic called xkcd? I usually enjoy its mix of insightful humour and utter nerdiness, but I'm not sure I much like today's instalment, despite the amount of effort that must have gone into creating it ( Read more... )

I've written about my exploits buying lunch in Subway before. But today things got a little bit weird ( Read more... )

My A-level students arrived back in classes today, just two weeks after the rest of the country. Such are the perks of teaching at a place that has mainly international students. And one of these students, a very polite young man from China, gave me a gift. Some proper, authentic Chinese tea leaves ( Read more... )

I have decided that my supermarket allegiance is no longer with Sainsbury's. It hasn't been for a while, actually. I've also gone off Morrison's recently too. These days I seem to prefer the experience that I get from Asda. Perhaps that's because I'm an inherently downmarket type of person. Or maybe it's that their salads are quite nice ( Read more... )

Today I watched the 2008 film Hunger on YouTube. That's the one about the 1981 hunger strikes by locked up IRA prisoners in Northern Ireland. After my visit to that part of the world a few weeks ago, I wanted to try and understand why the hunger strikers felt so strongly about their cause that they'd be prepared to martyr themselves for it ( Read more... )

I've never read a Stephen King book before. In my mind he only wrote horror stories about Jack Nicholson bursting through doors with axes, and I never really understood the appeal of that, so I avoided his work. But then, a few weeks ago, I heard about 11.22.63 and downloaded the Kindle version ( Read more... )

You know what I really don't like? E-mails and other correspondence that is signed off with the word 'Regards'. And now I am going to tell you why that is ( Read more... )