Time to go

I'm off to play elsewhere for a while. I'll still be tweeting. TTFN *<...

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RIP Brain Selby: How Selectadisc made me a groovy fecker

Sad to hear that Brian Selby, the man behind Nottingham's legendary record shop Selectadisc, has passed away. Along with the NME and John Peel, Selectadisc defined my musical education in the 1980s. I'd hear a band on Peel, see the advert in NME...

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Mussel fritters

Finally, the first in what will no doubt prove to be an interminable series of almost-recipes. The reason being, I tend to buy random stuff and then work out what the hell to do with it. My Twitter followers often pitch in with ideas, I Google a recipe, leave out the bits I haven't got / don't fancy and add in stuff that I like / happens to be in the fridge. So this started out by buying a box of...

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SNAP: Spondon village cricket

Well, the So Needs A Photo series never really took off. So let's kickstart it. Lazy summer evenings watching cricket. Shadows lengthen. Haze plays with the horizon. Wide balls are swatted lazily. And here, at Spondon Cricket Club as they...

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Mosler: Australian GT 2012 update

Here's another belated catch-up with how the Mosler marque is getting on in GT, this time concentrating on the Australian championship.In the season's opener, supporting the Clipsal 500 at Adelaide back in March, sole Mosler entrant John Briggs finished...

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The incomplete A-Z of beer: A will be for...

Attenuation. Thanks to those who've already started answering my random questions on Twitter.  To help me keep track, I've opened up a collaborative document; feel free to paste in links to pdfs, include useful diagrams or jot down your thoughts. I'm particularly interested in hearing from brewers and scientists on the challenges of attenuation, how to control the rate, how to monitor...

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The incomplete A-Z of beer

Time to get this project jump-started. In short: I'm looking for contributions / information / opinion / enlightenment on various beery topics. The idea is that I learn something and share it with the rest of the tinternet. It won't be comprehensive, some parts may be overly-detailed and specialist but that's the way the crumble cookies. The first four topics are: * Attenuation * Brettanomyces *...

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Mosler: Britcar British Endurance Championship 2012

It's been a while since I reported on how the Moslers are getting on, so here's a look at the first four rounds of the Britcar British Endurance Championship. This season sees just the one Mosler entry, though it features drivers who've driven the...

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Out of the book: Marcus Wareing's Spicy Lamb Sticks

I've a shelf full of cookery books. And a kitchen corner crammed with cookery books. And a lounge table littered with library books. And, yes, some of them are cookery books. Well, they're feeding no-one as they are. So each week I'm going to pluck out a recipe and give it a bash. In particular I'll be looking for those that feature ingredients and techniques that push me out of my culinary...

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Saturday lunches and Derby Market forces

At some point, my Saturday lunches have segued from ample to simple. Pub lunches tended to be some place where they served rare burgers, beer battered onion rings and skinny frites. Nowadays it tends to be where I can get thick-cut cheddar and onion in a cob, maybe a slab of pork pie on the side, bags of Seabrook's split to share round the table. At home it's become simpler still. That's probably...

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An Open Letter To All The Arseholes Behind The Wheel

To the driver of the Trent Barton Ilkeston Flyer, leaving Ilkeston at 1545 on Tuesday 5th June 2012 and almost ploughing into the back of a car outside Spondon about eight minutes later: the passengers could all see the car slowing, then indicating. You're paid to do much more. Including for having the responsibility for the passengers behind you. To the driver of the small black car who ran through...

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The Right Not To Write

I used to be bought the Letts Schoolboy Diary every year as a Christmas stocking filer. January's became crammed with spidery text telling of snowball massacres, worm executions, tries almost scored and faint glimpses of teachers' cleavage. By mid-February a pattern emerged: "Got up. Went to school. Came home. Had tea". At an early age, I'd discovered the tyranny of a diary's expectation. How they...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Land Rover

April 30th 1948: The Land Rover Mk I debuts at the Amsterdam Motor Show. Regular readers will know that I don't drive, have no intention of learning to drive and even if I did, have no intention of buying a car. That's what Mrs Scoop's little blue beer...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition

April 25th 1769: The Royal Academy's first Summer Exhibition opens in a Pall Mall warehouse. Something really tickles me about the RA's Summer Exhibition. Maybe it's that anyone can enter; stump up a £25 quid entrance fee and your work could adorn...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Pennine Way

April 24th 1965: The last section of the long-distance trail, the Pennine Way, opens at Malham Moor. Many walkers who like peat between their cleats will have faced up to the challenge of the 267-mile, 249-stiled walk. They will have a favourite...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: St George's Day

April 23rd: England celebrates the feast day of Saint George. To be honest, it's not something that all Brits celebrate. St. Patrick's day may be an excuse to dress like a twonk and drink over-nitrogenated stool-water masquerading as dry stout; St....

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Oxford English Dictionary

April 19th 1928: The last section of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles is published. Show me the adolescent who insists they haven't looked up a rude word in a dictionary and I'll show you someone who "speaks untruthfully with intent to mislead or deceive". Released in sections over four decades, "A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles" was immediately reprinted and renamed...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Extreme Ironing

April 18th 2011: Jason Blair irons a shirt on the southbound carriageway of the M1. As a measure of British eccentricity /our general desire to bugger around, extreme ironing is right up there with toe-wrestling and lilo rafting. It was invented by rock climber Phil 'Steam' Shaw in 1997 and has seen boards taken up mountains, beneath oceans and, uh, into the middle lane of a motorway. Albeit...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Canterbury Tales

April 17th 1397: The Canterbury Tales are first told by Geoffrey Chaucer at the court of Richard II. It's been a long time since I blogged about Richard Happer's excellent little book. So here we go again. The Canterbury Tales continue...

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The sun shone that day too

Shadows on the pitch. There's something about the sunshine at a late-season game, moreso those at the latter stages of the Cup. Maybe it's a holiday feeling: on a coach with your mates, an ice cream when you get there even though the wind whips between streets, a day in the sun with long shadows and the right result. Shadows on the pitch. Not fans dying. Today is the twenty-third anniversary of...

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Back in the room

The last fifteen months have been fairly difficult for me. Working for a private sector company delivering public sector contracts, the squeeze on the business began to feel like a slow strangle. Redundancy dates staggered forward under the hope of new contracts coming through. Although it soon became apparent that the Coalition's strategy for business support weren't aligned with my employers'. I'd...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Humphrey Davy

9th January 1816: Humphrey Davy trials his safety lamp at Hebburn Colliery. When I left school, we still had pits in Nottinghamshire. Five minutes from my house was Moorgreen Colliery, as seen in the picture. When we visited grandparents every other...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Queen Mary 2

January 8th 2004: RMS Queen Mary 2 is christened and is the largest ocean liner ever built. Still. Cruises have never appealed to me. There could be endless gourmet food, a microbrewery and Pearl Jam playing an acoustic set in the Tropicana Lounge,...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: William Dickson

January 7th: William Dickson patents 35mm film.  Apparently. Whilst developing the Kinetoscope for Edison, Scotsman William Dixon is said to have invented 35mm celluloid film and patented it. And I'm buggered if I can find any internet reference...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Stones roll

January 6th: The Rolling Stones play the first gig of their first headline tour. Which, according to the Rolling Stones database of Nico Zentgraf was at the Granada Theatre, Harrow-on-the-Hill. And the possible set was Girls/Come...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: William Smith

January 5th: William Smith discovers the principle of faunal succession. Sort of. I studied geography. In primary school, I yomped through all the 'Countries Of The World' worksheets so my teacher had to make up more for me to complete. Hence my...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Rose Heilbron

January 4th: Rose Heilbron becomes the first female judge to sit at the Old Bailey. What surprises me more about Rose Heilbron is not what she achieved but how I've never heard of her before. Especially when I'm in Liverpool. Heilbron was born and educated in the city and went on to be a trailblazing female barrister; the first woman to - lead an English murder trial - plead a case in the House...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Thatcher and Ice Cream

January 3rd: 1n 1988, Margaret Thatcher becomes the longest-serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century. Almost. As Hugo Young has taught me, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, completed his third term of...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: Kipling writes 'If'

January 2nd: The Jameson Raid of 1896 fails and later inspires Rudyard Kipling to write 'If', one of the most mawkish poems in English literature. It graces the likes of over-wrought Powerpoint presentations, sports trailers on TV and the entrance...

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British: The Union Flag

January 1st: The Union Flag (as we know it today) is first flown. The Acts of Union passed in 1800 came into effect on January 1st 1801 and so the Union Flag was revised into the form we see today. I remember little about my junior school education....

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365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British

It's backtrack time. I've just picked up 365 Reasons To Be Proud To Be British from the library. Mainly because I recently bought another book by the same author, Richard Happer, which has been making me snort hot tea out of my nose on a regular basis. This one's a little different; more in the QI 'fascinating facts' mould. Each of which inevitably leads me onto the tinternet to find out a...

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