Things I Have Learned Recently

It's good to have two changes of clothing for small children on long flights. Because after the peeing incident, there's the lasagne-down-the-front-of-the-shirt incident.

When it gets really hot, British roads melt. Cars get stuck in them.

The woman who plays Tasha Yar, the character on Star Trek, is Bing Crosby's granddaughter (Denise Crosby). Maybe the rest of you knew this already. (I can hear some people saying 'Who's Tasha Yar?' She's Bing Crosby's granddaughter, okay? Now pay attention.)

Absolutely every piece of British slang can be traced back to a rhyming Cockney term for a rude part of the anatomy, and if it can't, they make up a way that it can. Of course, that could just be the kind of people I know.

Color movies were actually invented in 1924 by Friese-Greene, by alternating shooting through a red and a green filter. It produced a strange flicker, so the technique was never perfected. It makes people filmed back then look a lot more modern and less antique, though.

They are threatening to rename Penny Lane in Liverpool, because it was named after a merchant who made a fortune trading slaves. Predictable flurry of newspaper letters about this.

'The Gruffalo' is the best children's picture-book ever written.

It is hard to be efficient when you're having a lot of fun. There really needs to be a way to do both, because you don't want to regret having had fun.

Everyone needs a tummler.