Paul and I popped round to Chateau Seamus on Monday evening to catch a quick glance of the McCauley twins before they head off on their road trip north. We were each assigned a twin to hold, but within five minutes they'd start howling and we'd have to hand them back to be placated. Once quietened, we'd take hold of them again and so the cycle of ( Read more... )

Rather like the boffins in the 2004 science fiction / drama Primer, I appear to have inadvertently invented a time machine. Placing an orange in the device it disappeared, only to return three days later completely unchanged. Clearly it skipped through time using string theory ( Read more... )

I haven't read the mission statement of the Fail Blog, but it primarily appears to be a means for prudish people to decry sexually-themed objects - in Europe, a urinating statue is a cause for tourists to hike halfway across Brussels, and generates 25% of Belgium's GDP through the sale of postcards, key rings and garden sculptures; in the Fail Blog ( Read more... )

I was feeling sorry for myself as I headed into work this morning. It was pouring with rain, work is rather boring, and often in the mornings I’d rather just stay asleep.

How wonderful then for Traffic Cone Boy to provide such a stirring example of what true happiness is. Sitting in a puddle with a traffic bollard as his back rest, he braved the ( Read more... )

The weekend started in fine style on Friday, when Terriem cooked a fabulous feast for Arkansas, spimcoot, Paul and me, and also supplied a range of wines carefully tailored to each course (and not just "best wines first, Hungarian country wine at the end once your tastebuds are shot" like usual). It turns out Terrie has a vast living room / dining ( Read more... )

I love the Children's BBC tv-show Gastronuts, in which a well-meaning graduate of the 'Nose To Tail' school of cookery takes six polite and articulate (see: middle class) children and makes them eat whatever the hell he likes (dog food, pig's tails, blood, testicles). This week, he invited them to guess where sausage casing comes from ( Read more... )

It's an odd world in which two glasses of white wine from the top of the list and a single eccles cake will set you back £18, especially when we were expected to sit in the wind-swept corridor. Still, that's St John's in Clerkenwell for you ... and the eccles cake did come with a giant slice of wensleydale cheese ( Read more... )

Ethan Weightman emailed me today to say: "if this is really david tennant then you can reply if not dont bother"

Been introduced to the shift key or apostrophe yet, Ethan? Anyway, I didn't bother replying, but it does beg the question: was that really Ethan Weightman?

I also met a con-woman on Tufnell Park Road last night. I know she's a con-woman because she's tried to work me several times before: she explains how she's accidentally locked herself out of her flat without any money, and that she needs £3.50 for the tube to go get a spare key from her mother ( Read more... )

Walking along Tufnell Park Road in the drizzle last night I was flattered that many of the people coming the other way were stopping to take my photograph. It didn't take long to tire of the paparazzi, and Kelly Brook has my sympathies (if I can have Cipriani ( Read more... )