joeblade

joeblade

Editorial

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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

  9. 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

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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.

  14. 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 [...]

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  18. 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 [...]

  19. 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 [...]

  20. 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.

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