At Sixes and Sevens with Souse
I recently read an interesting newspaper article about a lawsuit related to the “6-7” craze that dominated youth culture in 2025 and remains popular well into 2026. If you are unfamiliar with the whole six-seven thing (I’ll have to admit that I was!) it’s a meaningless phrase that originated in the lyrics of this rap…
Keep readingWisdom Received and Passed On
I didn’t really intend to write a blog post this week, but yesterday I had a two-minute chance encounter that made my day so I had to write about it. I was coming out of my local Trader Joe’s supermarket when I heard a voice call out behind me. Turning around, I saw a man…
Keep readingOn a Year of Blogging
Right around a year ago I started this blog as a way to get myself into the habit of writing again. It wasn’t my first attempt; in fact the first thing I posted was a re-post from my old blog (long gone now) about the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. Since that time I have…
Keep readingBook Review: Enshittification
Chances are that you have experienced enshittification without even knowing there was a word for it. If you can remember the dial-up days of the internet, you might remember that when Google first appeared, it was absolutely amazing. The other search engines of the time, like Lycos, Ask Jeeves, Infoseek and AltaVista, were clunky and…
Keep readingPanic! Here Comes the Bogeyman!
When I wrote last week’s blog post about the need to think critically about the messages put out by the media, it got me thinking about the various moral panics that I have either encountered in my lifetime or have read about from the past. The term “moral panic” was popularised by South African born…
Keep readingMonty Hall and the Search for Truth
I wrote an article about the Monty Hall problem on my old blog several years ago and found myself thinking about it again recently. I was reminded of the importance of the ability to think critically and to be aware of how easily our minds can be fooled into believing something merely because it “feels…
Keep readingTime, and Time Again
Writing a blog like this, I tend to spend a lot of time focusing on the past, whether it is my own history, local history for the area where I grew up, or that of culture or technology. In doing this, I notice some curious effects of this mental time-travel. One of the most noticeable…
Keep readingBook Review: Stolen Focus
There’s a certain irony to this review of Johann Hari’s 2022 exploration of the attention crisis currently gripping society. I bought the book when it first came out and only recently finished reading it after three abortive attempts. The reason? Other things distracted me. Clearly this issue is affecting me too, so recently I sat…
Keep readingThe Sunday Post Newspaper
In last week’s post, I recalled one of the rituals of Sunday morning being a trip to the newsagent to pick up a copy of The Sunday Post newspaper. For the uninitiated, this is a Scottish newspaper, founded in 1914 and which, in the late 1960s, was estimated to have a readership of close to…
Keep readingNever on a Sunday
Sitting down to write this post, I am sharply reminded that as a British ex-pat living in the United States, I will forever have a foot in each country, so to speak, as far as my memories go. I remember when I moved here around a quarter-century ago being impressed by the convenience afforded to…
Keep readingThe Power of the Playlist
I have written before that one of the experiences I think has been lost in recent years is that of listening to all the tracks on an album in order. In my recent post about Pipedream by Alan Hull I made reference to the musical and emotional journey that this provides for the listener and…
Keep readingTaking the Arcade Home
Video games are such a ubiquitous part of people’s lives now, being played on phones, tablets, consoles and computers. Their variety and complexity are such that it’s easy to forget that for members of Generation X, playing a video game usually meant a trip to the arcade to play simple games like Space Invaders and…
Keep readingThe Punk Rock Internet
1977. Star Wars, Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee, the death of Elvis Presley and the arrival of punk rock in the UK. What a time to be alive! I was there, busily chanting my multiplication tables in unison with my classmates at junior school. It’s hard to convey just how dangerous, how subversive those first…
Keep readingRed in Tooth and Claw
There’s a little black cat in my neighbourhood which may or may not be a stray (it has no collar but looks well-cared-for). The other day I went out into the back garden to check on a plant, when I saw the cat’s head poking through the fence. When I followed the direction of the…
Keep readingClassic TV: Doctor Who Series 7 (1970)
Jon Pertwee’s first series of Doctor Who was a landmark in the history of the show. As well as introducing a new Doctor, it was the first series to be broadcast in colour. Pertwee’s Doctor was a flamboyant man of action as well as a mysterious alien scientist. He loved fast vehicles and practiced Venusian…
Keep readingRemembering Jarrow Elvis
Estimates as to the number of Elvis Presley impersonators active in the world vary wildly, from around ten thousand all the way up to half a million. On Tyneside during the 1980s and 1990s, we had a unique Elvis tribute act of our very own in the shape of Joe Allen, aka Jarrow Elvis. Joe…
Keep readingClassic Albums: “Pipedream” by Alan Hull
When I selected my “20 Albums that made an Impact” for a Facebook challenge several years ago (they are reposted starting here if you’d like to read them), I mentioned that Pipedream by Alan Hull would be a strong contender for my favourite album of all time. I thought I’d spend a little time looking…
Keep readingEnid Blyton and Me
One of the things I am extremely grateful to my mother for is instilling in me a love of reading. From a very early age she would read to me as I sat on her lap, watching her finger pointing out the words on the page. I was able to read well before I started…
Keep readingHebburn Swimming Baths Memories
I learned to swim when I was about six years old. A friend of my mother’s from work, Sid Richardson, loved to teach swimming and had taught numerous local children to swim. So, on a Tuesday evening he would pick me and my mam up in their car and take us down to Hebburn Swimming…
Keep readingIn the future, nostalgia won’t be what it used to be either!
After writing last week’s post about nostalgia, I started thinking about the fact that the things people get nostalgic for are often cultural: Television shows (the 1960s adaptation of Robinson Crusoe, Bagpuss, and The White Horses often come up in discussions by British people around my age), board games (Mouse Trap, Operation and Bloik!!), sweets…
Keep readingMusic Video: Never Give Up (2026 Remix)
“Never Give Up” is a song from my band Grumbling Ginger’s album “Smooth the Rough”. We recently did this gospel-style remix, inspired by listening to the Heritage Gospel Uplift show on one of our local radio stations, KSQD-FM. It seems that with so many things in the world being uncertain at the moment, so many…
Keep readingNostalgia ain’t what it used to be
When I started my new blog back in July of last year I didn’t intend it to be a nostalgia blog as such. However, as it turns out, a lot of my posts have been about my memories of growing up, of books, television and so on that I enjoyed in my youth. So be…
Keep readingWe Never Missed the Water
I’m not quite sure exactly what I am trying to say in this post. It was inspired in part by an article I read in the Monterey County Weekly (apologies in advance, it has intrusive pop-up ads, unlike the print version) about the decline of local newspapers. You see, I used to work for one…
Keep readingClassic TV: Not The Nine O’Clock News (1979-1982)
One of the cultural phenomena I remember clearly from my youth is that of “must-see television”. There were some shows that felt like compulsory viewing, and would be discussed and quoted endlessly at school the next day. To miss an episode truly was to miss out, as video cassette recorders were uncommon and expensive in…
Keep readingHebburn Park Memories
It’s funny to think sometimes just how easily pleased we were when we were young. A trip to Carr-Ellison Park in Hebburn was quite the treat when I was a young boy. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photographs of myself at the park, so any pictures that I include in this description of my memories…
Keep reading20 Albums that made an Impact – Part 4
Here’s the final part of a series of 20 albums I picked for a Facebook challenge a few years ago. The challenge was to choose 20 albums that had made an impact on me. For each album I mention, I’m including a YouTube link to a track from that album so you can get a…
Keep reading20 Albums that made an Impact – Part 3
Here’s part three of a series of 20 albums I picked for a Facebook challenge a few years ago. The challenge was to choose 20 albums that had made an impact on me. For each album I mention, I’m including a YouTube link to a track from that album so you can get a taste…
Keep reading20 Albums that made an Impact – Part 2
Here’s part two of a series of 20 albums I picked for a Facebook challenge a few years ago. The challenge was to choose 20 albums that had made an impact on me. For each album I mention, I’m including a YouTube link to a track from that album so you can get a taste…
Keep reading20 Albums that made an Impact – Part 1
I’m starting off 2026 with a re-post of a series of albums I picked for a Facebook challenge a few years ago. The challenge was to choose 20 albums that had made an impact on me. The original challenge was to post an album a day for 20 days; here I am going to present…
Keep readingSpotting the Scam
One of the things we are always told about scams is that everyone is susceptible to them, it’s just a matter of finding the right match between scam and person. Earlier this month I received an official-looking notice in the mail. It looked like this: I think this letter represents an example of a scam…
Keep readingBook Review: Happy
Happy by Derren Brown is another book that I bought when It came out but took a long time to get around to actually reading. I read about a third of it back in 2016 before getting distracted by something else and putting it back on the shelf. It was only recently, during a particularly…
Classic TV: Doctor Who Series 13 (1975-1976)
On 25th August, 1975, I watched Tom Baker, in character as The Doctor, sitting in a cinema presenting clips from Disney films in the August Bank Holiday edition of Disney Time. At the end of the show, a hand was seen passing him a note. He read the note and announced “It’s from the Brigadier.…
The Dragoni Brothers
When I was a youngster in the 1970s, I remember people of my mother’s generation and older being very keen on a local band called the Dragoni Brothers. They played widely around the North East at the time, mostly at clubs and smaller venues, though they did perform at both Newcastle City Hall and the…
Forgotten Products: Merry Fizz / Meri Mates
Have you ever had a memory of something that absolutely no one else seems to remember? Where you ask people about it and they look at you blankly, so much so that you wonder if you dreamed it? One such memory for me is of a brand of soft drink my friends and I used…
Goodbye Ace
Yesterday I read the news that founding Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley had died aged 74. Since then, I have been reading tributes from people in the world of rock music as well as discussing it with friends on Facebook and wanted to gather a few of my thoughts here. First, the music. I remember a…
Book Review: Spying in Guru Land
This is quite an unusual book review in that it is thirty years since I first read William Shaw’s account of the year he spent joining religious cults in and around London. What has prompted me to write about it after all this time was reflecting on my review of Lucy Brown’s Hate Club. In…
Mill Lane Reservoir Memories
If you were born after about 1982, St. Joseph’s Court will have always occupied the corner of Mill Lane and Victoria Road West in your memories. Here is a photograph of how that corner looks today: When I was growing up, the view was rather different, as that corner was the site of a covered…
Crusader Magazine
As a pupil in a Catholic junior school in the 1970s, one of the things I used to look forward to was the monthly arrival of Crusader magazine. This would be sold to us by our teacher for 8p a copy, and avidly read during morning break on the day it arrived. Crusader was a…
Classic TV: Doctor Who Series 12 (1974-5)
As anyone who knows me can attest, I have a deep and abiding affection for Doctor Who, having watched it ever since I was a wee scrap of a lad sitting in front of the TV in the living room. (My first Doctor was Jon Pertwee, accompanied by his companion Jo Grant, played by Katy…
Picturing the Past
A little while ago, I was in my local branch of Trader Joe’s supermarket and happened to mention to the young woman scanning my groceries that at one time the store used to share the building with a branch of Blockbuster Video. She said that she had heard about it, but could not remember it…
Book Review: Hate Club
In her memoir Hate Club, author Lucy Brown takes us back to 2016, and a Britain in turmoil. The Brexit referendum, racial tensions, fear of Islamist terrorism, concerns over immigration, and the increasing likelihood that Donald Trump would be successful in his bid for the White House all had Britons feeling uncertain about the future.…
Newtown Shopping Centre Memories
In the 1960s the Newtown area of Hebburn underwent significant redevelopment. Most of the buildings inside the red square on the map below would be demolished. The terraced houses in these streets would be replaced by new flats, both in the Newtown and in the School Street development, and the shopping area centred around Station Road…
20 Influential Singles – Part 4
Here is the fourth and final part of my list of influential singles from a 2023 Facebook challenge. The idea of the challenge was to post each day for 20 days a single that had been influential in my life. I expanded this to include singles which, when I listen to them, vividly conjure up…
20 Influential Singles – Part 3
Here is the third part of my list of influential singles from a 2023 Facebook challenge. The idea of the challenge was to post each day for 20 days a single that had been influential in my life. I expanded this to include singles which, when I listen to them, vividly conjure up a particular…
20 Influential Singles – Part 2
Here is the second part of my list of influential singles from a 2023 Facebook challenge. The idea of the challenge was to post each day for 20 days a single that had been influential in my life. I expanded this to include singles which, when I listen to them, vividly conjure up a particular…
20 Influential Singles – Part 1
Early in 2023 I took part in a Facebook challenge to post each day for 20 days a single that had been influential in my life. I expanded this to include singles which, when I listen to them, vividly conjure up a particular time in my life. In addition, I wanted to concentrate on singles…
School Street Flats – a follow-up
Last week I published my blog post with my memories of the School Street Flats in the early 1970s. I was quite astonished by the response I received in the Hebburn Facebook groups and on the Hebburn and our Neighbours web site. So many people came forward with information and their own, usually happy, reminiscences…
School Street Flats
When I was young, like many children of Hebburn’s Catholic families I attended St. Aloysius’ Infant School on Argyle Street. At the time, the school must not have had its own kitchen facilities, because I can remember the food for the school lunches being delivered in big metal containers out of a van. They didn’t…
Book Review: The Compound
I picked this one up thanks to a New York Times recommendation, and it’s an assured debut for Irish author Aisling Rawle. It’s a tense psychological thriller set in a near-future world. The Compound is the most popular reality show on television. In it, ten young women and ten young men live in the titular desert compound, surrounded…
Death by a Thousand Subscriptions
I am well aware that writing a blog is something of an exercise in vanity, and that as well as being the author of this blog I am also probably its only reader. However, I write it mostly for the pleasure of getting my thoughts out on the page and to be able to read…
Doctor Who and the Target Novelisations
One thing I imagine people who have grown up with BBC iPlayer, DVR or even VCR would find hard to understand about growing up in the 1970s is the notion that if you missed an episode of a TV series, you had missed it. End of story. The only way you would ever be able…
To Change the World, Click Here (or not)
I first published this on my squashy.net blog in 2018. A year or two ago, an old friend posted the following on his Facebook page: WANTED: Participants for a book-loving social experiment. Comment if you want to participate and I’ll send you details. What do you have to do? Buy your favorite book and send…
Birtwhistle Avenue Shops
I originally wrote this in 2020 for Norman Dunn’s excellent Hebburn and Our Neighbours discussion board. It was subsequently posted on the Hebburn.org website which sadly no longer exists. This version has been updated with a couple of pieces of new information. Another little shopping area close to me when I was growing up was…
Hartleyburn Avenue Corner Shops
I originally wrote this in 2020 for Norman Dunn’s excellent Hebburn and Our Neighbours discussion board. It was subsequently posted on the Hebburn.org website which sadly no longer exists. I have been thinking a lot about the shops that used to be on the corner of Hartleyburn Avenue and Victoria Road West when I was…
What’s next for Doctor Who?
I just finished watching the latest series of Doctor Who on BBC iPlayer. That’s right, nearly two months after the last episode aired, the one with THAT reincarnation sequence. What did I think of it? It was… well… OK I suppose. To be honest, it has been hard to care about Doctor Who for quite…
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
I first published this post on April 24, 2016 on squashy.net I have to confess to having something of an obsession with the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. Whenever I hear it on the radio, I find it rather mesmerizing, and always think the same thing: “What would inspire someone to write a song like…