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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