Editorial
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My first 999
17 January, 2010: I was once again near a traffic accident, though this time I'm not taking the blame as I wasn't thinking about anything much at the time beyond the lyrics to Nancy Sinatra's Some Velvet Morning. What made this accident notable, though, was that this time I was first on the scene. Aside from the victim, obviously.
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Furnished
13 December, 2009: Yesterday, after living in the same barely-furnished flat for nearly three years, I finally caved and bought an extra dining chair, two bedside tables and one coffee table. They don't match, they're as cheap as I could find from IKEA's online store (the really cheap stuff demands a car and a personal visit) and I will happily leave them behind when I next move. Nevertheless, the decision to buy was one I agonised over for about a year.
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Covered in bees
8 August, 2009: Now everybody's competently growing tiny lettuces and dismal herbs in their window boxes and smugly claiming that as 'food', the logical next step seems to be keeping livestock: pigs and chickens and the like. Lately, this has manifested itself as an interest in bees. Everywhere I look, someone is writing about bees.
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Viene la tormenta!
28 June, 2009: I wrote recently that I wasn't a big fan of the summer but that I didn't see it as a precious commodity that would be wasted if I wasn't out roasting myself a shade of lobster red instead of sat on my sofa playing Fable 2. I've been reminded this weekend of another reason why I'm sceptical about the whole season, because in the UK, every sunny day seems to come with a big bastard storm attached to it.
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Staying in for the summer
31 May, 2009: It seems that in England, summer has arrived in force, with not just days of warm weather ahead but rumours of entire weeks of it.
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That damned, elusive Grand Café
10 May, 2009: Here's a surprising fact; having lived in London for more than two years, I only began taking my laptop to write in cafés about a month ago.
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Cause and effect
15 February, 2009: Since moving to London, I have witnessed precisely two motorcyclists being knocked off their bikes by oncoming cars, and both times I have felt at least partly responsible.
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Celebrity chess
8 February, 2009: I've been trying to build a celebrity chess set based on the celebrities I've seen since living in London
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Every time I eat a sun-dried tomato I die a little inside
25 January, 2009: Highgate is only one tube stop north of Archway but when you arrive there it's like you've accidentally arrived in some sort of Oxfordshire village, all leafy and judgmental
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The Man in Brown
20 December, 2008: So, apparently, the last thing I wrote here was a rant about GAME; I suppose the experience must have been pretty traumatic, as it happened over a year ago and I've only just recovered enough to write something new. I'd like to say that I've spent this gap year doing interesting and exciting things, but I'm afraid that mostly I've been dithering, faffing, and generally otherwise mooching.
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That Student Life
1 July, 2007: I've found myself fantasising about what I might do if I was suddenly offensively, disturbingly and disgustingly rich.
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A Newcomer’s Guide to London
18 March, 2007: So I’ve now spent three weeks in London and I thought it would be helpful to anyone else thinking of moving here if I passed on a bit of advice, based on what I’ve learnt so far, to help you avoid culture shock or finding yourself in an embarrassing social faux pas.
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That Was the Oxford That Was
25 February, 2007: About two years and two months ago I arrived in Oxford from Canterbury (via a few months in sunny Weston). Today, I arrive in London, which I’m going to assume is a lot like Oxford, except about 100 times bigger, a bit dirtier, and full of knives.
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Everything Must Go
4 February, 2007: A problem with moving house is that you have to sift through all the crap you’ve been happily hiding away for months. For the most part, this can be quite cathartic, as you mercilessly cull anything with more than a millimetre of dust on it, casting out vast sacks of rubbish into the gaping maw of [...]
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Dazed and Confused
29 October, 2006: I apologise in advance if this week’s thrilling momentary diversion is a little disjointed, because the last 12 hours has seen me slightly unstuck in time. This is because last night, at 2am, the clocks changed, and while I thought they were going forward an hour, it turned out that they were, in fact, going back.
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Petty Victories
10 September, 2006: So, this week I’m going to talk about toilet rolls, and toilet roll dispensers. This might seem like a bit of a departure from my usual high-brow material — you know, Superman, Gameboys, Cafés — just please bear with me, as I’m trying to make a wider point.
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Bald Men’s Last Haircuts
20 August, 2006: Joeblade this week is brought to you by Ian Hair has always been an issue for me. In my family, there comes a time in every young man’s life when your male elders switch in your estimation from being everything you want to become to being those bald guys you know you won’t be able to avoid turning into.
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So What’s Up With Me?
25 June, 2006: Though it may not seem like it, I don’t exclusively spend my days drinking coffee in Oxford and bitching about bad comic-book adaptations (though I do do this a lot). No, sometimes, I’m busily being productive, so busy that I’ve been drafting in guest writers at short notice to fill the gap here and there when I haven’t managed [...]
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Living It Up
18 June, 2006: Not being much of a traveller, my experience of hotels has been slim to the point of non-existence. In fact, last year during the @media conference was the first time I’d even stayed in a hotel, which was unfortunate as it was a God-forsaken Holiday Inn Express or some such, with the bare minimum of walls and ceilings [...]
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Turn That Racket DOWN!
11 June, 2006: Joeblade this week is brought to you by h Hello. My name is Helen and I have a problem: I’m a cantankerous 40-year-old harridan trapped in the body of a nubile early twentysomething.
