I've always had what I felt was a sensible mistrust of people who can order the world into 'correct' and 'incorrect'. To me, that is the way of the extremist: "difference is bad, my way is good, kill those who oppose". As such, I am wary of mathematicians - or as I like to call …
London, 1940. The wail of air-raid sirens signals another attack by the Luftwaffe. The screaming noise is punctuated by the dull percussive thud of bombs. Just on the edge of hearing the angry bee-swarm-hum of propeller engines provide a droning bass note; ceaselessly framing the other sounds in hateful monotone. Nights are spent lying in …
The boy turned one this weekend. One whole year in which we managed to not kill and/or seriously wound our offspring. As he grows older he becomes ever his own person, growing and showing hints of the man he will one day become. That man will, based on current indicators, be a psychotic being of …
A recent article on the BBC pondered on whether or not people would choose to have amputations so their birth limbs could be replaced with bionic ones. Apart from sounding like a brilliant idea in itself (who doesn't occasionally wonder what it would be like to have super strength) it opens up a huge …
The sound of joyous baby laughter has to be one of the finest in the world. It is uninhibited glee that would warm the stony heart of even the most craven UKIP supporter. I would say that it has to be one of my favourite sounds in the world. It wasn't always so. When the …
Dear Yamaha, I have been the proud user and owner of the Yamaha RBX170 bass guitar (in metallic red) for around a year now and whilst I was impressed by both the sound quality and affordability I have of late become overawed by the general quality of the build and its resistance to dribble. Now, …
I am sorry. There, I said it. The reason for my apology? Well, if you happen to be flying from Bangkok to London tomorrow you'll see a youngish (and somewhat harassed) couple get on board with an infant and you'll know that, for the next 12 hours, you're going to be in earshot of a …
When I was a child, I used to love watching pro-wrestling. At school on a Monday morning we would talk about what we had seen on the previous Saturday afternoon. Who had hit whom with a chair. What vendettas had progressed. How amazing the high-flying moves looked. And then come break time, we would run around …
As with all of these types of things I tend to leave them to the last minute. The increased sense of pressure makes me actually get the job done rather than research the genealogy of Siamese cats on Wikipedia. True to form, I thought I could throw something together in twenty minutes that would sum …
I realise that the title is misleading. I haven't started some underground cat/baby pit-fighting league on the moobaan where crowds of Vietnamese boat workers throw money into a dugout in which a cat and a baby are smacking the hell out of one another. I mean I would, but the immigrant visa for Vietnamese boat people …
tastehitch 