One of my writing inspirations is the late Alan Coren, who wrote columns for several UK national newspapers, was the editor of Punch and The Listener at various times, was a panellist on a BBC radio satirical quiz show, and wrote several books, whose titles are guaranteed to raise the eyebrows of unsuspecting bookshop browsers. At one stage in his… Read more »
In days of old, when news media reported interesting and important happenings in a sober fashion for most of the year, the mid-to-late summer period was known as “Silly Season” in the UK and elsewhere. The official explanation is that the amount of government and business news declines in the summer, so the newspapers have to be padded out with… Read more »
Here at the Hatchery, we have company in from England for a couple of weeks. My favourite second-cousin-on-my-mum’s-side and the only godparent to have retained an interest in our kids’ spiritual welfare (and who has recently been promoted(? Demoted?) to honorary cousin) arrived here in the frozen north last Friday ostensibly to spend some time with Mrs. H. and me—although… Read more »
What’s the most stressful aspect of parenthood? Forget the terrible twos, the teenage sullenness and the fake-ID-facilitated drinking binge. Giving a name to the bundle of joy that will inflict those trials and tribulations upon you is infinitely more trying. And for the crime of poor name-choosing, many parents should be tried, found guilty, and sentenced to eighteen years of… Read more »
If you’re averse to scatological pieces, you may prefer to read some of my other (faeces-free) pieces. It was my daughter who recently pointed out a common thread in many of my articles. “Dad,” she said, “you seem to have a fixation with poo.” To many people, such an observation made by offspring to sire might seem shocking, but here… Read more »
Last week, I started to write a piece in which the characters of the Cluedo board game were discussing Mrs. White’s demise, but then I discovered that the characters’ names are all trademarked. I don’t have the resources to check if my piece would have been an infringement of those trademarks, and if so, to obtain a licence, so I… Read more »
News item: Goat rescued after getting stuck on power lines The above article describes how a goat, which had somehow ended up hanging by its curly horns on a power line, was rescued. There is (or was) a Youtube video showing the rescue. This one was working as at 2016-07-23. The following news report is a work of fiction based… Read more »
If GWB was still president, and given recent events, I’m sure he would have been asking his advisers what all the fuss was about a turkey coop in Europe. But apropos my topic for this piece, I’m equally sure he would have had his military folks taking a close interest in southern Alberta right now. You see, we’ve got oil… Read more »
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece that was inspired by a news report that a gull had been rescued from a discarded tray of curry. A few weeks prior, I’d written something that was inspired by reports that the Finnish Postal Service was offering a lawn mowing service. The other day, I spotted a report about a mail… Read more »
Life is too stupidly busy at the moment for me to write something fresh for this week’s article, so here’s a piece from my unpublished archives, circa 2004. In the early 2000s, I worked as a technical writer for the IT department of a major oil and gas company. Each floor of the building had two kitchens for staff to… Read more »