My deer mother
What do you mean, it’s almost the end of January 2017 and I’ve barely started posting this year? (Oops. Sorry about that.) Well, I’ve been busy, as it happens. My Mum came to visit! I got to pretend to be a daft tourist again for a few days. Any excuse, me. It was a great […]
Resolve to watch more Pure & Weary in 2017
Every January, I make some New Year’s resolutions. By February, I’ve usually given up on most of them. ‘Change my hairstyle’: achievable. ‘Try not to cry while eating chocolate, because it’s ruined too many onesies at this point’: not so much. While I was wondering what to work towards this year, a new and timely […]
Nearly 50 years of comedy panel analysis
Have you ever wondered how often your favourite comedy panel shows have female guests? Brave soul (and data scientist) Stuart Lowe has checked nearly 5,000 episodes of UK panel shows to find the male-female host/guest ratio. That’s 4,700 individual TV and radio broadcasts spanning 49 years. And it took around four years to put all […]
An un-elf-y pastime
Selfies. We all take them (and probably too many of them). I hold my hands up to that – with my iPhone clutched tightly in one of them. This Christmas, my beloved Mum’s gone one better. We’ve moved on from emoji-filled text message wars. Seeing as texting me is now 10 times as expensive, there […]
Too much of a good thing
This week, I moved from Kansai (western Japan) to Kanto (eastern Japan). Osaka and the rest of Kansai has been really good to me. In the way grandmothers are good to you because they constantly ask you to eat more cake. I stuffed my face with all of the fried, baked, generally not-all-that-healthy things the […]
Staying warm from the bottom up
When it gets cold – and it does, rather quickly once October’s over – Japan’s many drugstores, department stores and variety shops have plenty on hand to keep you cosy. Heated carpet? We’ve got that. Microwaveable foot blanket? Step right up. One thing you’ll see everywhere is kairo, bundles of little heat packs you can […]
