There was absolutely no excuse (other than the obvious one of avarice) for continuing to flog a beloved, 30-year-old story.... (read more)
I don't want to see your underpants. I do not want to hear your music. I do not want to listen to one half of your worthless, jabbering mobile phone conversation.... (read more)
Yeah - you know the January people: The young, pumped guys - grunting, picking up way too much weight, then letting it crash to the mat like a construction site disaster... The middle-aged disco queens trotting in and out of 'Legs, Bums, and Tums' in fresh-from-the-packaging lycra...... (read more)
More evidence for my solidifying theory that anything you see being read on public transport, more than about once, is rubbish.... (read more)
Apparently your student population isn't pleased about paying ANYTHING for a higher education...... (read more)
It's like the Battle of Algiers out there. I counted no fewer than 41 police vans on, or just off of, Parliament Square.... (read more)
I happened to catch some bits of the last Prime Minister's Questions. This man is a total knob - a muppet of the first rank. And Mr Cameron gives him a well-deserved, and well-executed, spanking.... (read more)
Is there really any need for Shia Labeouf? Would we, perhaps, be better off without Shia Labeouf?... (read more)
11) You could for instance pick up a bad head cold in NYC, probably while shouldering your way through herds of insalubrious New Yorkers, which will later find its full flowering in DC. (Ah-CHOO!!
1) You could get separated from your partner at f*&^ing passport control, because one of you holds a U.S. passport and one doesn't, and because there's no queue for "mixed couples".... (read more)
So those of you who have already seen Iron Man 2 will not need me to explain which sequence of Scarlett Johansson's I'm talking about here.... (read more)
Yesterday our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, out on the campaign trail, had a very pleasant, smiling chat with a local woman, then jumped in his limo with his wireless mic still attached, and proceeded to completely slag her off.... (read more)
Well, you finally get around to booking a big holiday - and on the exact same day here comes the worst disruption of commercial air travel since WWII.... (read more)
Fucking great. Now not only are we going to be assailed by sidewalk-hogging, escalator-blocking, over-foot-rolling, twice-the-space-of-normal-people, thumpity-thump-goddamned-thumping, draggy luggage people - but now they're all going to be stopping periodically to get at their coffee in their draggy luggage-mounted *cup holder*. ... (read more)
I told him that really a Tube Strike is pretty much like the weather - no one can do anything about it, so everyone just works around it, and I like running, anyway. Well, by the end of yesterday, I've changed my position. My position now is: Frack TFL.... (read more)
Another year in London, another fracking Tube strike.... (read more)
So I just read the new Denis Johnson, which follows up his National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke. I'm sure a lot of people will remember me going on about Johnson - his novel Already Dead, A California Gothic has long been my second favourite novel of all time.... (read more)
We enjoyed a lovely breakfast in the well-appointed, if slim, West Highland Way Sleeper dining room. The morning train went by outside.... (read more)
During our breakfast at the big table in the big kitchen of the bunkhouse-y B&B, we were joined by a man leading a tour... So then it pretty much a matter of getting ourselves down off of Conic Hill, and onto the shores of Loch Lomond - the bonny banks of which we'd be walking along for the next two days.... (read more)
Morning, breakfast in an amazing upstairs room with, reassuringly (to, you know, me) several guns on the wall. Rather less reassuringly, there was this countour map of the West Highlands, which our hosts thought they were being helpful in pointing out to us.... (read more)
29) The rehashing of every ridiculous cliche we've all seen at least 100 times. 28) Could anyone in any of these movies ever, just once, find something without the bad guys appearing that second behind them with guns to take it away? Could somebody just one time find something and go home with it?... (read more)
Lying in my tent in the Lizard, near to the pigs, I dreamt long, vivid, grand, yet frustrating dreams. Really long and involved. I wonder how time compression works in dreams. Are we like Data, reviewing video at impossible speeds?... (read more)
It had stormed overnight. I got up, crawled out of the tent, and moved the now-even-more-soaked travel towel from the fence (where it had been "drying") to an actual clothes dryer in the main building. I then broke camp, stowed my pack, and hoofed it into town... (read more)
Dawn on the Crater Rim - and major themes seemed to be brutal cold, and sophomoric humor... (read more)
Lake Malawi is the 3rd largest in Africa (behind Tanganyika (Burton's discovery) and Victoria), and the 9th largest in the world. It is 580km long, and believed to be 750m at its deepest point. Moreover, due to it's waves, winds, tides, and unpredictable weather, it is officially classified as "the sea."... (read more)
