(Note to the uninitiated—“Cholmondeley” is pronounced “Chumley”. Honest!) The old year had been unceremoniously booted out the door, down the street, and over a convenient cliff nearby. The new year had been welcomed with open arms, ringing bells, popping fireworks, and as much general enthusiasm as a group of people who had celebrated the New Year exactly the same way… Read more »
For a while now, the world’s been treated to people yelling “Okay Google…” or “Hey Siri…” at their smartphones and then proceeding to ask (? Tell?) said “assistant” to do something (most popular “somethings” include asking for the answers to “What’s the meaning of life, the universe and everything” and “Why are fire trucks/engines red?”) As far as I know,… Read more »
I don’t suppose your parents wrote down (or recorded?) your first words, did they? Or perhaps you actually remember them yourself; a babble that elicited tears of joy, and cries of “o-o-o-o-ohhh! You said your first w-o-r-d! I must phone your grandma/auntie/probation officer!” Most people’s first word is “mama”, and naturally mum gets excited because it was her that baby… Read more »
Where are you on the hedonist/libertine–puritan spectrum? As with much in life, moderation is surely the key, so you should be somewhere in the middle. (After all, we need balance, and fulcrums do tend to be somewhere in the middle…) Wine, women and song (or, according to your taste, absinthe, men and poetry; or moonshine, sheep and haiku) twenty-four hours… Read more »
Here at the Hatchery, it’s SNAFU once again, after a period of our schedules being FUBAR. For a while there, my waking thought each day was “ADIH”. AFAIK we should be able to settle into a routine for a while—and that’s OK by me. Phone’s ringing. BRB. Sorry ‘bout that. Texting, Twitter, and instant communication in general have all created… Read more »
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 »
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 »