This Is Local London

I never thought I would ever own a car

11:42am Friday 18th May 2012

My wife and I were talking this week about our early lives and attitudes to possessions that were prevalent in society when we were young.

Not only did he fix our car... he also reads my column

10:10am Monday 14th May 2012

The trouble with insurance is that you either spend a lot of money and get no benefit at all because nothing bad happens, (which is a big minus and a bit of a plus of course), or something bad happens and you get some of your money back and sometimes even more than you laid out over the years of premiums you paid.

Yummy mummy made a meal of the bill

3:40pm Friday 4th May 2012

CALL me an old curmudgeon, but there are some aspects of modern parenting that make me dream of administering electro-convulsive aversion therapy to the perpetrators.

Their poshness is a detail not a crime

4:50pm Sunday 29th April 2012

DAVID Cameron and George Osborne were characterised by one of their own backbenchers this week as ‘posh boys who didn’t know the price of milk.’ Well I may not be posh, but I didn’t know the exact price of milk either.

Why do they expect us to work for free?

10:58am Friday 20th April 2012

WHAT is it about musicians, actors, artists and writers that makes the rest of the world think that it is perfectly acceptable to ask them to do things for nothing all the time?

I saw hard evidence of our water crisis

10:40am Sunday 15th April 2012

WHEN I was 16 years old and living in the North, I cycled with friends to Ladybower Reservoir near Sheffield because the village of Derwent which had been flooded two decades earlier when the reservoir was built, had emerged from the depths when the waters receded during that long, hot summer.

Web small print is longer than Hamlet

6:20pm Sunday 8th April 2012

IT was no surprise to learn that less than 7% of us actually read the ‘Terms and Conditions’, otherwise known as small print, that we all happily confirm that we have read when we agree to anything online. The real surprise is that as many as 7% do read them Yes, it is irresponsible not to read something before signing it – and for most things, as an ex-lawyer, I am a stickler for doing so. But those reams of small print that you tick as ‘read’ when you sign up to a credit card or service provider would defeat even the most pernickety of pedants.

Don't treat the internet like the walls of a public toilet

4:00pm Friday 30th March 2012

THE opportunities offered by the internet and social networking sites to communicate immediately and internationally have potentially huge benefits for humanity.

I take my hat off for Hairspray at school

11:50am Monday 26th March 2012

ONE of the biggest corporate failings, it strikes me, is the lack of opportunity for front line customer service employees to use their initiative.

Are these tales really too Grimm?

10:20am Sunday 18th March 2012

So now fairly tales are considered to be too scary for the delicate sensibilities of today’s children, if a survey of two thousand parents is to be believed. The brothers Grimm apparently took their name too seriously in delivering fantastical tales for children for two centuries. 2012 marks the bicentenary of their first publication, in fact. But the brothers were collectors of tales that had been around much longer than that, tales that explored the darker aspects of what it is to be human, to be afraid and to question a whole host of things that we may well know a little more about today but which still exercise thinkers, philosophers and writers.

I gave match tickets as a Valentine’s gift

6:20pm Monday 12th March 2012

CALL me an old romantic, but I decided to push the boat out on Valentine’s Day this year and bought my wife two tickets for last week’s England v Holland friendly at Wembley. She decided to take me with her. My generous entrainment package included parking (for over twenty pounds) in the ‘Wembley official car park’, which turned out to be an industrial park almost a mile away from the stadium. We dined expensively too. For the same price as we could have had a lovingly prepared meal for two in one of our many excellent local pubs, we queued at one of the burger vans that line the impressive Wembley way and chewed our acquisitions under the bronze statue of Bobby Moore, whose arms seemed to be folded in mute disbelief as he gazed off into a more acceptable distance.

Electricity changes sparked rising prices

10:30am Sunday 4th March 2012

ANYONE over the age of 50 will remember that before the internet came along to make our lives so much easier, things like electricity and gas came from whoever supplied them in your area.

Kostalotta coffee is not my cup of tea

10:36am Tuesday 28th February 2012

ONE of the most successful marketing operations of the last decade or two has been the elevation of the hot drink, specifically coffee, to the same level as branded clothing and shoes, as an indication of the wearer/carrier’s style and status.

Bypass breakdown was a nightmare

10:40am Sunday 19th February 2012

IF you were thinking of breaking down on the A404 Marlow by-pass, my advice to you is – don’t. My own car was in the garage on Wednesday, so I used my wife’s 4x4, which is mainly used on local journeys normally, to take my daughter to the airport. On the way back (mercifully – as if this had happened on the way there, the result could have been calamitous for my daughter’s flight to Shanghai!), the car started to overheat and within seconds slowed to a crawl and stopped some 800 yards from Handy Cross roundabout.