Category Archives: The stuff of daily life

At the conclusion of an episode of Gone Fishing, the BBC television series with Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer, a day’s fishing in Yorkshire on the River Ure concludes with an exchange of gifts. The programme had included an encounter with … Continue reading →

I was never a person for Union Jack bunting. When I lived in Northern Ireland, it marked out an area as Loyalist and always had associations with the tensions of the marching season. In England, Union Jack bunting seems to … Continue reading →

I’ll tell you what, there’s a lot more on television now than there was in the 1970s, and there’s still nothing on. Searching through the television schedules, there’s a sense of what a Saturday evening felt like in teenage years. … Continue reading →

The filing system in my grandparents’ farmhouse seemed to be two drawers in the kitchen sideboard. A diverse range of paperwork seemed to be stored in them, from the brown card tags that were fastened to the milk churns each … Continue reading →

There was a time when Tunnock’s sold five million of their caramel wafers every week, a fact that was advertised on the wrapper of each wafer. One day, a cousin on the home farm read the figure and said, “I … Continue reading →