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Showing posts from November, 2018

DON'T INHALE

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Even your best friends won’t tell you. You smell. It’s counter-intuitive to realise there’s something negative about cycling in to work. The positives are legion. It’s healthy, it keeps motor traffic down, it’s cheaper than train or bus and it sets you up for the day, buzzing from a pleasing endorphin rush. But unless you have a carefully-planned, post-ride strategy you run the risk of alienating work colleagues and having them whisper grumpily about you behind your back. The first determinant in how well you will cope with entering the workplace dripping sweat and road debris onto the corporate carpet, is whether or not your employers provide any facilities for the two wheeled-worker. More than twenty years ago, this wasn’t even a question you could ask. There were no work changing rooms or showers in those days. You had to stand at the sink, in the toilets - often on tiptoes - trying to swab as much of your torso clean as you could manage in the cramp

THE INVISIBLE MAN

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Maybe I’m showing my age but I’m not a fan of Hollywood blockbusters centred around improbable cape-wearing, underpant-flaunting, superheroes and their adventures. Spiderman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Hulk and their ilk, just never sparked my imagination. I find it impossible to suspend my disbelief sufficiently to enjoy films featuring these comic-book creations. A man who can fly in not much more than his under-crackers? Really! The one exception is Batman. I grew up with the original, cheesy, 1960s TV series; the caped crusader and his sidekick Robin ‘KAPOWING!’ me into couch-potato submission every time they flickered onto the screen. As a small boy I wore a dish towel safety-pinned to the back of my t-shirt with pride. In those childhood moments I WAS Bruce Wayne’s crime-busting alter ego. For some reason the recently-departed Adam West rendered his superhero oddly believable. That’s all in spite of the stilted dialogue, ludicrous plot, high