God Save the Queen. We mean it man
2014 will be the World Cup of jaunty national anthems. The hosts lead the way with a tune so twirly and swirly that that listening to it is the musical equivalent of eating a Curly Wurly on a really fun rollercoaster. Indeed it’s so catchy that Brazil supporters have a tendency to keep singing their…
Seven things you can learn about football from movies
At 19, Michael Owen had won the Premier League Golden boot twice and was one year away from winning the Ballon D’Or. And he’d never read a book. He revealed this, ironically enough, while being interviewed at the launch of what some might call his premature autobiography, Michael Owen In Person. Not only this, he’d…
Thoughts on writing tutor notes
Nigel Slater changed my life. Or rather, his recipe for chicken wings with lemon and cracked black pepper did. I was once a shamefully unashamed fussy eater, who barely cooked or thought with any imagination about food, and I rarely even glanced at Slater’s cookery column in the Observer Magazine. But something about those glossy,…
Academic writing is…
I recently blogged whimsically about metaphors, the post kickstarted by some thoughts on an EAP sequence on the subject. Here I am simply to summarise some metaphors for academic writing (or writing from sources to be more exact) that I have encountered in my work: AN ESSAY IS A CONTAINER : The essay contains ideas.…
When the net ripples
It has become clichéd for footballers to talk about whether or not scoring a goal is better than making love; Paul Ince even claimed that tackling was better than sex, which raises more questions than it answers, not least in relation to the importance of wearing shin pads. No doubt in the modern game scoring off the field is…
Who’s in the room? Metaphors I teach by
My daughter opened her bedroom door this morning, and with it a world of opportunities. She’d snatched at the handle before but never quite managed to turn it. Happy and fearful in equal measure at her achievement, she turned to me and reached for my hand before taking a step out into the dark hallway,…
Reading a story tweet by tweet
I like Jon Ronson. I never realised quite how fascinating a person he is until his recent appearance on the Richard Herring Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP!) After that interview I started following Ronson on Twitter, and yesterday he appeared on my timeline with a series of tweets that move from curiosity to despair in under…
Confessions of an accidental travel agent
The Barclays Premier League. Listen to any obedient top-flight manager being interviewed these days and you’ll hear those four words repeated far more often than “sick as a parrot”, “game of two halves”, “set our stall out”, or “over the moon, Brian”. Not even a minor speech impediment could prevent Roy Hodgson from using the phrase at…
On nationalism
“English & proud. If you are too, read this leaflet!” ENGLISH & PROUD is the largest text on a glossy fold of A4 currently being posted through letterboxes across the country. It’s a message from a right wing “political” party, compelling the public to show their pride on the 22nd of May by voting for the English Democrats,…
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