The Time Bubble

I tend to look forward to the Easter school holidays more than most of the others because they fall at the beginning of spring. After months of cold and darkness, suddenly the weather is getting better again (in theory), the days are longer and there's suddenly lots of places we can go and things to do. Since New Year, I've been more or less sat at my desk 24/7 writing my latest novel which came out in March. The kids have been at school every week except the half-term break in February and there's not a lot going on at that time of year. So, here we are in the Easter holidays and I'm determined to shake off the chains of winter hibernation and get out there and do things. The children are getting older now which increases the range of things we can do. There are all sorts of days out we can now have, however, like most families there are budgetary limitations. Much as I'd love to spend all our days out at theme parks, all of those things cost money. There are p...

This blog entry is predominantly about horse racing so if it doesn't interest you, it's probably best to look away now. I suggest looking back through the archive for some of the "funny" posts about sausages instead! Our school's motto is "Dare to be wise". I like this. I have changed one word though for the purpose of today's post, because I like to "Dare to be different". What do I like to dare to be different about? Well all sorts of things really. When it comes to popular culture, the more popular something is, the less I like it. Mass market TV such as The X Factor is a big no-no for me. I've always nailed my mast to the cult and niche interests. In my teenage years and beyond it was indie music all the way. In fact if a song by an act I liked made it to No.1 in the charts, I'd go off them! Fortunately the likes of The Smiths, Depeche Mode and others never scaled such dizzy heights. Being a Doctor Who fan was also tough g...

Well I've finally nearly finished the new karaoke books. This seems to have taken even longer than usual this time, but I am determined to the point of obession to dot all the i's and cross all the t's. Putting these things together causes considerable problems, you might think it's easy cutting and pasting the track names in each month but there's all sorts of pitfalls. For example, you may have tracks by "Beatles" and "The Beatles", that's helpful for a punter perusing an A-Z. And numerous other idiosyncracies that I could mention if I wanted to bore you from reading any further into the article. I do worry I feel about things that may be somewhat trivial, as when compiling an A-Z you also have to consider numbers which generally come before letter in an alphabetical list. Hence the proliferation of cab firms with names such as the one below in an attempt to be first listed in the yellow pages. Now this is where things get a bit tri...