Bloggertropolis

Date: Sunday, 2nd August 1989 Time: 13:49 Location: Back Garden I’ve taken my temperature and it’s slightly higher than it should be. Blood pressure, rising. Tenseness, shortness of breath, all on the increase. This is starting to scare me. A friend of mine warned me during a CND march a few years back that this might start to occur. He told me not to leave Shepherd’s Bush. That it was dangerous out there. Strange things happen. It’s not safe. Of course I didn’t disbelieve him, but things...Read Full Story

I nearly didn't write about this. (1) because it's a "minority interest" post - many of my international readers won't have watched Ashes To Ashes (or it's forerunner Life On Mars) and (2) those of you that have will be behind the UK in its scheduling of this show and I really don't want to ruin the ending of the entire series and franchise by peppering this post with spoilers. Which is going to be damned difficult to do. But I am going to do my best.To say this has been (for me) the best TV...Read Full Story

On Monday afternoon the wife and I decided to make the most of the last day of our holiday staycation by following in the footsteps of many and spending a pleasant few hours in the local park with the kids. And by “the kids” I, of course, mean our kids specifically rather than “the kids” generally. I’m afraid the days when I’d sit on a park bench necking back a bottle of Diamond White with the local yobbery are far behind me. There are, after all, only so many cars that you can nick, joyride...Read Full Story

When I was an impressionable teen I got into magic. Or rather the idea of magic. In fact this occult interest lasted well into my impressionable twenties. At the time the occult section of Waterstones (now, I believe, respectably entitled “Health, Body and Spirit” or some such) was bursting at its magical seams with middle class grimoires from the likes of Laurie Cabot and other darker tomes from the late, great and dangerous-to-know Aleister Crowley, who is in fact a fellow Leamingtonian. I...Read Full Story

+++ APOLOGIES +++ MINORITY INTEREST POST +++ So. Torchwood. The Doctor Who spin-off returned for a third outing last week in a lavish new 5 part story that was broadcast every day, Monday through to Friday. I was, I admit, dubious.Series one and two of Torchwood were disappointing. Like a chocolate cake that just wasn’t quite chocolaty enough (the diet coke of sci-fi). Good ideas were there – but were spread to thin. The acting was good but the scripts were frequently weak. The stories built...Read Full Story