of-course

Occasionally on this blog I have the odd rant about language, and in particular about creeping Americanisms. There’s nothing wrong with Ame...

Where the hell are we? I didn't do geography at school. I couldn't find the classroom! Boom, boom! I'm not even goi...

Visual Verse is a website that publishes a picture and asks writers to write a short piece inspired by that picture. It's  ekphrasis a...

At the creative writing course I attended today I learned a new word; ekphrasis . It is a piece of writing that comments on or is about ano...

The occasional visitor to my blog might be forgiven for thinking that my odd rant ettes about American language mean that I’m in some way ...

So much of Dickens' writing has passed into everyday parlance and the term Scrooge is no exception. It has metamophosised from a noun to...

A lot of Americans get emotional or agitated at the mention of ‘9/11’ for understandable reasons. I get agitated when British newsreaders an...

For those of you that are confused and must celebrate Christmas please note that it is 'Father Christmas ' and not 'Santa' o...

My previous post about Christmas reminded me of the lies that are regurgitated every year by the lackeys of the right. Unfortunately the lik...

Contrary to popular belief 1,000,000,000 is not a billion. It is only a thousand million. A real billion is one million multiplied by one mi...

So glad that a British crisp maker has switched to calling their crisps what they are, crisps. I can now buy Tyrrell’s Crisps with a clear ...

I don’t have a lot of time for nationalists or patriots. They are indeed scoundrels. I’m not even sure I subscribe to the notion of land ow...

Anyone who uses the term or hash-tag (as it is popularly known) ‘#hackgate’ on Twitter is a complete tosser. To which gate might they be r...

Some poor misguided souls don’t seem to know what an ass is. They live under the misapprehension that it is a bottom. Perhaps they have bee...

In my previous post about multiculturalism I indicated that I didn’t really accept that there was such a thing as Britishness. But if I was ...

Over the last week I’ve heard the phrase ‘badly mismanaged’ used twice on the BBC. Once on Radio 4 of all places, and once on the East Angli...

Isn’t e-mail a wonderful thing? I’ve just received a reply to an e-mail I had sent to someone supporting them as they had asked me to do. T...

Terry Wogan told a joke this morning that amused me. It's probably an old one, but I'd never heard it before. Anyway here goes: Q...

Whenever you hear the phrase ‘political correctness gone made’ you know very well that it’s a hoax with no or very little basis of truth and...

What the fuck is the ‘holiday season’? I know one thing, it isn't now. The holiday season is all year round as people take holidays all...