What a great piece of copy that is. It's up there with Go to work on an Egg or the Ready Brek Central heating for kids  television advertisements. The most creative ever perhaps was the sign outside a camping shop - “Now is the Winter of our Discounted Tents” - that is genius. Here is the Manchester Guardian of 1949: Although they made 5,000,000 hats for men last year the hatters of England are not happy. Four out of five men under 35 in some towns are unkindly indifferent t

What is real and what is not real? When I was quite young. I saw the film Chariots of the Gods,  based on Eric Von Daniken's book, at what was probably the Saturday morning cinema – a regular showing of roughly child friendly films. However I was badly frightened by one film the details of which I have forgotten. The one nightmarish scene I do remember – they were trying to force a man to sit in a strange seating contraption. Perhaps this echoed my fear of being gassed at the

I remember as a child seeing from the family car, the strange temple like buildings along the Golden Mile stretch of the Great West Road at Brentford. These factorys still seem otherworldly today; very retro but somehow still very modern; secular temples to industry and progress. I worked for a bit in the Gillette factory canteen during the 1980s.one of my various random jobs that I rather enjoyed. I suppose the inter war years were other worldly in a sense. There must hav

The ferry was nearing it's destination – the Island of Symi, just an hour from Rhodes. My senses are alive after the beautiful crossing. I went below; I didn't want to miss the stop. There are a lot of don't knows travelling abroad. I must quote the American Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld: “ There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the one

“A great man of letters” That's the phrase that came to mind. It's a bit like “Renaissance man” it's one of those things. I am always amazed by the output of writers, those thick tomes, all those classics. Dostoevsky - wrote most productively when he was in debt – he had a gambling addiction -sounds horrible. I'm not a quick reader but I do like a big thick book sometimes. – but all that writing- how did they bear to do it? I am just impressed basically. All those words! All

So we're now in the 3rd week of our relatively liberal lock down. The 23rd of March was the last time I had gathered with chums in Oxford and the first time I felt a bit spooked – it was a “ this is really happening” moment. People must have had the same feeling at the start of WW2 – except greatly magnified. I was looking around for a place to get my coffee fix; to my relief good old Greggs was open. I was very pleased recently to see this Greggs opening in the centre of Ox

Such a relief to have entered 2020. The threat of that Pol Pot Corbyn and his henchmen and henchwimmin averted along with their Year Zero policies. The Tory scum & Un-Woken plebs in the North not enforceably Woken up at re-education camps or liquidated if they where beyond reprogramming. The cities have not been emptied by climate extinction fanatics in an attempt to create a carbon neutral agrarian utopia and the consequential mass starvation. As has been said “The road to h

There must be a whole sub culture of people who have to take their washing to a launderette to get it dry in winter. The last few dryers in my nearest one in the Cowely Road (2* internet rating) have all finally died. So I had to take the wet washing on the bus to another one down the Abingdon Rd. (1.5* rating) All the driers were cold. While I waited I read the handwritten signs - the does and don't s. Strange and existential experience waiting in an empty launderette on a

This Jolly person looks down at me as I do a bit of voluntary work at the Ashmolean. I'm on the entry desk for the the Pompeii exhibition The Last Supper . This figure looks like an alcoholic to me - prancing along those wine flasks. Voluntary work is very liberating actually – there was no 3 person panel interview to get through to do it and I feel free – I choose to be there. Also Sunday morning is a good time to engage with the public – it gets me up and about. Sunday has

It's quite possible to go downmarket in Oxford and so for a refreshing alternative I walked over to Cowley. Up the hill and left to Temple Cowley where the Knights Templars had a big presence from 1139 – 1240. The Romans also settled in Cowley The line of a road runs north-south along the eastern edge of Cowley. It linked a Roman town at Dorchester-on-Thames with a Roman military camp at Alchester near Bicester. Being very practical people they didn't bother with Oxford -far

Allow me to introduce my pair of Poison Dart Frogs! As you can see they seem to be bonding well. I don't want to disillusion you but they are very small – thumb nail-size in fact. But As you can see they come in splendid colours and are quite lively and intrepid when they are out and about. They have what I would call character; indulge me a smidgen of anthropomorphism. They always do it in nature programmes; (actually they overdo it but that is another topic.) These are Ran

I first came across this print version of the scream in my local library. I must have been in my early teens. I had a visceral reaction to this image; it was shocking and disturbing. Munch's work has the extraordinary ability to express psychological and emotional states. In viewing them we can actually re-experience those states, The satisfaction for me comes from that identification. Listening to music as a rather self indulgent emotionally tortured adolescence- it wasn't

After my last Blog my younger brother asked me if I remembered The Queen Sankskeny . To which I replied - WTF was that all about ? Allow me to explain; I was the older brother so I must accept responsibility. We shared the back bedroom when we were very young. I created a character called Queen Sankskeny - I'm sure I made the name up – it sounded like a pompous and puffed up royal personage. She was also very hungry. My Brother was the Court Jester...what else! Of a weekend

Robert Biggs came round one day and this is the sight that was waiting when I answered the door. He also sometimes wore a brigadier outfit. God knows were he got them from. Robert was a few years older than us and even trusted to escort us younger ones to the Girls and Boys exhibition at Olympia. We went out to play in those far off days. And our road was a dead end one- as we called it (or no through road). In the sixties there was only a scattering of cars; so we had plen

Someone called school days the happiest days of your life. Who was that person and what became of them? It's not fair that somebody says something at some point in history and then it's repeated endlessly for ever more. However for some reason I have recently been thinking about my primary school days with some nostalgia and affection. From 1963 to 1970 I was at St James Catholic Primary School in Twickenham with our Scallop Badged blazers, stripped black and white ties and

YE GODS! There was a sweet smell of spring in the air today. I have walked past girls in Oxford and thought “she really shouldn't be allowed out in public; she's a danger to an impressionable man's mental health. Something should be done! Where are the Trigger warnings?" They are everywhere -studious at their laptops in coffee bars, riding past on bicycles like an academic fantasy – speeding past on racing bikes. Have they any idea of the power they possess? Of course someti

I had started watching one of BBC 4's excellent historical documentaries presented by James Fox - Bright Lights Brilliant Minds about three Cities at defining moments of the 20th Century. This one was on Vienna in 1908 – it's golden age and it all looked very grand but behind the scenes things were getting neurotic; Freud was discovering the Oedipus Complex, the artists Gustav Klimt and Egon Shiele were breaking out and the mayor Karl Luegar was spreading his anti-Semitism.

In these gender bending times I have only so far been asked once how I identified myself. It was at my first session at RELATE last year. I wasn't inclined to make a smart arse reply at the time – I just went with it and said the obvious. I was at relate but without someone to relate to – because I was single at least in the everyday sense. There was myself, (extremely male obviously by all the sensory clues) the lady counsellor and an empty chair – for my partner that wasn't

I no longer have any expectations..... no point; it never snows any more at Christmas; at least not in the South East. Was it ever magical? I think it was – I remember. Summers were brighter and winters were colder, all the seasons were more defined. During the winter of 63 the snowman at the end of the road by the lone Scots pine stood for weeks. Expectations, disappointment, excitement, – the stuff of childhood, that we can struggle more with as adults. We lived in Twicken

And further more! One great thing about being an adult is knowing stuff and also knowing that adults are just other people. At school teachers are another breed, a kind of special category of adult for better or mainly worse if my memory serves. Never start a sentence with AND they said. It was wrong to do so – it broke the rules of grammar. In fact you got a red cross. And what child can challenge an angry red mark in their exercise book? It had authority and was blood