The Plashing Vole

Well, Monday again and I'm back in my otherwise deserted office, listening to the oddest song I've heard in a long time. Mark has an...

Further to The Culture, Cheese and Pineapple, Neal's cooking a Mussaman curry for Emma, Mark and I tonight. Then tomorrow it's Ho! f...

It's Friday afternoon, so the staff here are obsessed with this Name Anagram Generator . If you're good at Scrabble, you can work ou...

Some Slowdive ('Souvlaki Space Station' from the epic album Souvlaki ), and my favourite Mojave 3 track, 'Mercy', though the...

Last night I had the pleasure of seeing Ray LaMontagne , of whom I'd only read in Word magazine. (Thanks, by the way, for your comments...

Hello readers. How are you all? I sort of took the morning off. Instead of swimming and coming into the office, I went to Birmingham to look...

Merciless posted a link to this legendary film in the comments section, and I feel you should all see Telly Savalas's guide to Birmingha...

I'm reading Schoenbaum's Shakespeare's Lives at the moment - it's very good. In it, I found this description of an 18th-cen...

I'm going to a gig by Ray LaMontagne tonight, as Christine and her husband James have a spare ticket. Any opinions? I've heard he...

I'm agitating to get Jonathan Meades an honorary doctorate next year. What do you think? He's the sharp-suited, sunglassed, freakis...

Good Morning Campers, Hi-de-hi ! That's what I felt like last week as I traipsed round an enclosed Welsh campus making sure everyone was...

I love Doonesbury . Click on the image for a larger version.

As always, click on the images for a larger version. The whole set is here . Ismay Cowen (British Fencing director) seems at a loss… Georgia...

I'm quite pleased with this one - both feet off the ground. Victory and defeat in one shot. Curtis can't believe what the referee ju...

The Welsh Assembly building - astonishing. A Welsh epeeist prepares for a fight: Ben Hughes can't believe what's just happened. Nor ...

At last, I've posted my photos of the UK School Games - some of Cardiff Bay prior to the opening ceremony, which I missed because I too...

I hate to introduce the word cock-up in this context, but over at Sue's Blog , her post linking to the notoriously homophobic Daily Mail...

Well, that's graduation done. Decent speech from the Students' Union vice-president, worthy ones from the worthies. The honorary deg...

That's one graduation ceremony down. It's always a mixture of sweat, pride, laughter and astonishment - it's hot, there's a ...

In my absence, the flow of lovely books did not stop. Today's haul included Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutiona...