Category: Stuff

  • Online reviews and movie critics are fantastic - so why do we ignore them?

    The carpet is sticky and the smell of hotdogs mingles with sweet popcorn. The trailers are rolling. Even though person’s knee from the seat behind jabs into my back, I don’t care. The summer blockbuster is about to start and I’ve heard great things about it… But two hours, a bursting bladder and numb bottom […]

  • I can’t tweet without you: How twitter feeds our inner longing for friendship

    I think I’ve started to feel what it’s like to get old. Strange ‘#’ symbols started to flash up on the TV screen a few months back. Some odd new lottery I wondered? Oblivious to the newest and most important media advancement in the last decade, my friends laughed at my ignorance. Graciously educating me […]

  • Why popular culture is obsessed with Zombies

    Flesh-eating marauding monsters - frightening? You betcha. Like many of us, I love a good scare every so often and Halloween is a great time to do it. In terms of nightmarish thoughts, there’s little to top a zombie apocalypse. The prospect of being chased by a half-decomposed Granny truly scares me. They say adrenaline-stimulating […]

  • Bemused by The Great British Bake Off

    I couldn’t help but laugh. “James’ choux pastry isn’t rising – it’s a real disaster” the commentator said in tones as if poor James’ house had just fallen down. I peered over my wife’s shoulder to see the unfolding catastrophe: anxious looking cooks whisked, poured and prayed (whilst gazing into ovens). An elderly woman wandered […]

  • Why I hope this is the last Paralympics

    Blink and you just might miss it. If you don’t live in the UK, that is. Last night, 80,000 people watched the Paralympic opening ceremony - a slightly more modest, but nonetheless equally poignant affair than its bigger brother. As the kids return to school and the Olympic feel-good fades, it offers a last-hurrah for […]

  • The challenge to live a ‘no impact’ life

    Of all the consumables I couldn’t live without, it wouldn’t be the internet. Neither would it be chocolate, ice cream or shampoo. I think I could cope without electricity just fine (I learnt how to make camp fires as a child). No, the one thing that would really chafe me (quite literally) would be not […]

  • The real legacy of the Olympics: uncomfortable truths.

    About 15 years ago, I visited the Montreal Olympic Village. A captivating and beautiful city, the Olympic Village was a complete contrast. Tired-looking vacant stadia and vast, mostly unused concrete behemoths populated by a few shuffling tourists. I found it a depressing place and the slowly flaking paint symbolised a squandered enterprise. Costing Canada $1bn, […]