Monthly Archives: January 2023

I tweeted last year about some of the differences in day-to-day life in the USA compared to the USA. The prevalence of checks, the centrality of plastic cards as opposed to tapping your phone and the adding of tax (and tips) at the cash register (sorry, the till) are just some of the finance-related quirksContinueContinue reading “Taxing”

Apart from The Crown, Netflix hasn’t really had anything which piqued my interest for a few months. Perhaps this is partly down to me going a bit streaming service crazy since getting to the States. Then within a week or so, a couple of things popped up which have been good. First was the NorwegianContinueContinue reading “Fauda”

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I missed a post. I’m glad I’d done twenty-seven days before it happened. I wrote a few weeks ago about the idea of ‘dailyish’ habits, which I thought at the time was a more realistic approach to my New Year’s writing resolution, but with eachContinueContinue reading “Intellectual butterfly”

“They call it golf because all the other four letter words are taken” Raymond Floyd Of all the golf quotes I’ve happened across, this one from Raymond Floyd is my favourite. Golf is a frustrating game. For those with a penchant for profanity like me, it certainly strains one corner of my vocabulary a lotContinueContinue reading “A game of inches”

“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And itContinueContinue reading “The best moments”

This is another one of those ‘work in progress’-type posts. I am doing a bit of tutoring, helping a student to improve their extended writing. Thinking about writing, I am reminded of a comment which a friend and former political colleague, who was a also a retired teacher, made to me about encouraging students toContinueContinue reading “Writing your mind”

While it is less of an everyday concern with the circumstances of my new teaching role, I am still very interested in curriculum thinking. The emergence of AI in the form of ChatGPT and the quirky differences in pedagogical outlooks which I’m encountering outside of British state schools make me more convinced than ever thatContinueContinue reading “Well disciplined”

Another day and another population story. Last week The Economist ran a longer article about the growing number of grandparents around the world. Highlighting the differences between countries with more and fewer grandparents, the article considered the benefits which grandparents offer, not least in terms of the free childcare enabling women to enter the workforce.ContinueContinue reading “Population counts”

You don’t necessarily expect inspiration to come from a box of chocolates (apart from maybe that Forest Gump scene), yet my first experience of Baci Perugina chocolates was not only pleasant for edible reasons. Each individually wrapped chocolate – a kind of Perugian Ferrero Rocher – has a little quote wrapped with it. Amongst theContinueContinue reading “Wrapped in quotes”

I’m watching an Apple TV show called Echo 3. It’s not brilliant and it’s not terrible. I think it is trying to be something more than it has actually achieved. There is lots of politics and plenty of characters all exploring their morality. It reminds me of The Honourable Woman, a BBC thriller from aContinueContinue reading “Three bits and a bob”