2019-06-13 15:47
Grasp the nettle they say.
Live a little.
Seize the day.
Little do they know that I’ve been grasping the nettle since the age of nine. As a primary school pupil it was my party piece… Read More
Blog Directory > Life Blogs > The Slingsta life Blog >
2018-12-12 17:00
“No two snowflakes are identical, y’know?” people used to say, back in the 1980’s.
This fact was a thing of wonder. I was a child, and this was our moon landing. It t… Read More
2018-12-07 19:45
Nothing, I’m sure you’ll agree, is as boring as another human describing a dream they’ve had.
I have friends who are so interesting, entertaining, and downright charismatic… Read More
2018-12-05 20:05
Polar exploration has always looked like fun. As a boy, photos of grizzled men, beards and eyelids encrusted with ice, left me in no doubt what I wanted to be when I grew up: Ernest Shacklet… Read More
2018-04-30 16:46
Amber Rudd, as Home Secretaries go, was never my cup of tea.
In fact, as politicians go, Home Secretaries are generally not for me. The way they have to wield horrible authority is quite of… Read More
2018-04-23 18:24
It’s April 23rd 2018, which can mean only one thing: tonight is World Book Night.
A quick dredge through the silt of social media thankfully confirms that World Book Night does not ge… Read More
2018-04-20 20:04
I was just a boy when I first started walking like Nick Faldo.
Probably eleven, or twelve.
I would watch on telly as he strode down the final fairway at St. Andrews, golf bat in hand… Read More
2018-01-30 17:00
1. I don’t really understand what Reddit is.
Or whatever the latest thing is, that I haven’t heard of yet, that makes people go viral.
I wonder how many things I’ve misse… Read More
2018-01-29 20:56
Claire Perry MP, the Anti-Brexit Government Minister, has flung that most Tory of all the available insults back into the public discourse.
Swivel–eyed.
“Holding or expressing p… Read More
2018-01-20 10:56
People fritter away their working day looking at online nonsense.
We all know that.
Some of us know that from doing it, and some of us from witnessing it being done. If you are one of the 3… Read More
2018-01-18 17:05
Here’s the problem.
And by ‘the’ problem, I mean the one that just popped into my head. It’s a small one. Larger, more complicated problems are available.
I’m… Read More
2017-09-17 18:59
Who remembers 2010?
It was a time before Danny Boyle had theatrically opened an Olympic games and London had welcomed the world with joy, open arms, and ludicrously highly priced holiday le… Read More
2017-09-07 20:22
Some life-events are universal, and you expect them – job, kids, mortgage, inability to figure out what clothes a man of my age should wear – while others creep u… Read More
2017-09-04 19:11
Clever people have always written books about probability.
But more than ever now, clever people write books about probability aimed at people who don’t work in the probability indust… Read More
2017-09-02 11:42
Turning forty is a cliché. One of the biggest.
There are stock phrases and half-jokes (age is just a number, life begins…). Small talk, really, for politeness, and to be brush… Read More
2017-09-01 20:16
Brexit negotiations.
With those two little words I’ve just convinced eighty percent of people who stumbled across this blog post to quickly stumble past it, and in the… Read More
2017-08-24 12:23
Not that many years ago, common sense was all you really needed. When presented with some information you could just stop and think for a moment, and the truth would be there.
If NASA… Read More
2017-08-17 13:58
Woken, at who-knows-what-time, the sky was falling in. I’ve heard that sound before, I’d know it anywhere. It’s a primal sound, the response to which has been passed down… Read More
2017-08-16 11:51
We’ll happily pay for bottled water, broadband, and alcohol. We pay our mortgages, we upgrade our mobile phones, and we’ll kill an hour with a £3 cup of coffee.
But ask us… Read More
2017-05-25 18:00
When politicians in the UK address each other in the hallowed arena of the House of Commons, they use this phrase: “right honourable”.
It’s an honorific.
The “right… Read More
2017-03-13 14:44
It crept up on me and dragged me into a hip northern coffee shop on a Friday night. It caught me off guard and plied me with Belgian beer. It dazzled me with complicated time signatures.
An… Read More
2017-03-10 16:51
Unless you’ve been living peacefully in the folds of a heavily patterned cable knit sweater for the past few months, you may have heard of a thing called hygge.
It’s Danish, and… Read More
2017-03-08 13:14
There’s a place in my home town called ‘The Man Cave.’
They cut hair, and groom men.
I assume the grooming bit involves fancy shaving techniques and other things that I ca… Read More
2017-02-27 20:17
When it comes to money, I’m an un-realist.
I will entertain any state of affairs except reality. The only constant is my disdain for my actual, current financial situation which, what… Read More
2017-02-27 11:20
I was late to social media.
I was sniffy about it, and adopted a facial expression that said ‘pah!’ I proclaimed loudly to anyone who’d listen that it was for children, an… Read More
2017-02-24 13:59
There are two types of people in this world; those who embrace the natural order of things, and those who instinctively, actively, and wilfully resist it.
Luckily, I was exposed to AC/DC at… Read More
2017-02-21 17:41
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but the US president is in the news a lot these days. You know the chap I mean; orange fella’…tiny hands…huge misogynist…you can… Read More
2017-02-16 16:40
It’s not often that I’m moved to quote Abraham Lincoln during the course of a normal day. Not only do most of my daily activities fail to reach the minimum levels of gravitas to… Read More
2017-02-14 19:34
There are two types of people in this mad world of ours: those who duck pigeons in the street, and those who don’t.
We’ve all been there.
You’re walking up market street… Read More
2017-02-13 19:41
Here in my medium sized northern town, there are shops on the high street that define the times.
They are this, and then that, and then empty for a bit, then they become the other. I can&rs&helli…Read More
2017-02-09 17:40
Wikipedia, as a resource, is a pretty incredible thing. But it’s also long been a byword for a certain, ahem… looseness, in the general area of facts.
But now, in 2017, the era… Read More
2017-02-02 16:08
Some of us have imagination of such fertility, that we spend our time holding back a torrent of ideas and battling to prevent unwanted blog posts spilling uncontrollably on to the… Read More
2017-01-26 17:45
A brand can be a powerful thing.
You can attach things to it. You can make it say something, or represent something. And that can be something other than the truth.
Once you’ve succ… Read More
2017-01-25 16:13
In the UK there are six hundred and fifty Members of Parliament. One hundred and ninety five of these are women. Which means 70% of those seats are occupied by men wearing suits.
We all kno… Read More
2017-01-23 13:53
We live in suspicious times.
Professional deception used to be glamorous. It involved seduction, high living, and lots of sneaking around. The victims were largely charismatic master crimin… Read More
2017-01-20 18:54
The Trump inauguration has happened.
Over the next four years big business will be revered and climate change will be denied. Division will increase, inequality will rise, and the pro… Read More
2017-01-19 19:14
Remember farms?
They were big, rambling places, where through toil and strife animals were reared, crops were produced, honest livings were made, and Border Collie dogs were tied to ga… Read More
2017-01-13 18:52
As we are all aware, back in 2008 the UK economy dived gleefully off the edge of a cliff with the enthusiasm of a hedge fund manager shopping for a new yacht.
Despite the claims of some pol… Read More
2017-01-11 11:50
Questions are good.
They’re even better than answers, and should be encouraged and celebrated.
Children figure out the world by asking questions, and the adults who’ve lost this… Read More
2017-01-09 18:11
Amid suggestions that MP’s were unaware of the scale of food bank use in the UK, the Government has moved to clarify the situation.
“I’m fairly sure there’s bee… Read More
2017-01-09 07:15
We humans tend to obsess over the trivial.
We gossip, we fritter our time scrolling social media, and we get worked up about sport. Here in the UK, rather than solve the NHS, we argue over… Read More
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