Month: December 2018

  • The Secret Barrister

    I think it’s safe to say that The Secret Barrister is easily the scariest book I’ve read in a long time. The one takeaway you instantly get from it is that you never want to get involved in the UK legal system. Unfortunately, even if you’re a squeaky clean individual who does nothing wrong, there are many…

  • Boxing Day Radio Times 2018

    The third of three days’ worth of useful help to plan your TV entertainment. You’re welcome! In case you didn’t want to watch a new version of The ABC Murders on BBC1 (or indeed, watch the older version on ITV3 just to spoil your later entertainment), then there is always the radio – including a…

  • A Gothic Christmas

    A Gothic Christmas

  • Christmas Day Radio Times 2018

    Happy Christmas everyone! You’re probably stuffing your face with discounted Celebrations and Quality Street, or hitting the web early to get all those online sales. There are probably a few arguments and the usual Christmas merriment. Some are already planning how soon they can return an unwanted gift – or at least re-gift it. But…

  • Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver

    A superb gothic horror set in the wild fens of Suffolk. I first came across Michelle Paver with her excellent ghost story Dark Matter, set amidst an arctic expedition in 1939. She followed that with Thin Air, another great ghost story, but this time set in the Himalayas in the 1930s, following the route of…

  • Christmas Eve Radio Times 2018

    The big day is nearly here, and having navigated trains and traffic, cursed at airport drone-flyers, and got annoyed with people using smartphones in front of you in the street, you’re feeling all Christmassy! These days of course, there is serious competition from the streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. And this year,…

  • Chris Evans – Ad Free?

    Christmas Eve sees Chris Evans present his last Radio 2 breakfast show. Then he takes a few weeks off, before he reappears in brand new studios over in The News Building, just under The Shard by London Bridge station. There he’ll begin his new Virgin Radio breakfast show from the 21st January 2019. When I…

  • Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

    Have you ever wondered what life was like in a band in seventies? Then this is the novel for you.  I am something of a sucker for books, films and TV series set in the music industry. From Almost Famous (which perhaps is closest in vibe to this novel), to Vinyl and the little seen Roadies, I’m fascinated by a life that…

  • Reclaiming Additional Industry Compensation from Thameslink/Great Northern

    If you get the train regularly, you may know that 2018 has not been the rail industry’s finest year. In particular, there was the disastrous introduction of new timetables across the whole network, but particularly hitting the Northern Rail and Govia Thameslink services. I know the former has probably been worse, but I was in…

  • YouTube: Different Things to Different People

    There have been a few stories kicking around about YouTube’s end of year “Rewind” video. YouTube has been making these for a few years, and they’ve grown to become big-budget affairs. But this year’s video is seemingly the most “disliked” video in YouTube history. Now I should say upfront that I have not watched this video.…

  • Eleven Sports in the UK Reported to be in Trouble

    I wrote something on Twitter about this, but thought I’d elaborate a little here too. There was something of a shake-up in rights prior to the start of this football season when newcomer Eleven Sports entered the UK market and snapped up rights from Sky (La Liga) and BT Sport (Serie A and UFC) amongst…

  • IKEA Tradfri Lights Working with Hue, Alexa and Google Assistant

    Here’s another one of those tutorials that I really shouldn’t need to write but somehow do, because despite dozens of tutorials already existing online, it was only a combination of things that got everything working for me. In short, I already have a Philips Hue lighting set-up and I wanted to add some IKEA Tradfri…