Jazz is in the air in this part of Crotchety Land, it seems. Several online music contacts have wandered off along that mysterious twisting path recently. Who knows what they will find? Crotchety Man set off in a different direction; he doesn't like crowds. But the road kept turning back on itself, back towards the dangerous…Read more Dawn Lit Metropolis
Narrow Margins
In 1637 Pierre de Fermat, a French lawyer and mathematician, scribbled a short note in the margin of his copy of Arithmetica, a 3rd century AD treatise by the Greek mathematician, Diophantus. He wrote that he had found a marvellous proof of the following statement: an + bn = cn has no solution for any…Read more Narrow Margins
Listening Wind
The wind can be noisy at times. A strong wind will whip the sea into a seething, hissing foam; it will lash the sails of the yachts in the harbour and slap the rigging lines against the mast. Gales will send trashcans clattering down the street and make the trees moan and creak. Hurricanes will…Read more Listening Wind
Running In The Family
As a schoolboy, Crotchety Man hated the term after Christmas. He never liked the cold winter months and, worse, that was the term we had to go on cross-country runs. The Crotchety lungs couldn't deliver enough oxygen to the blood to sustain even a gentle jog for more than a few hundred yards, so distances…Read more Running In The Family
Highlights of 2018
In a few days time this blog will be four years old and, I humbly suggest, it's looking pretty good for its age. Did you know the average lifespan of a blog site is only 2 years and 7 months? That makes Crotchety Man positively geriatric! But before we celebrate our fourth birthday, let's look…Read more Highlights of 2018
Fire
The end of the year is a time for looking back. Today I'm going back 50 years, almost to the dawn of the Crotchety Man era. It's 1968, a time when experimentation in pop music was the order of the day and a slew of highly original acts flourished. One of the most flamboyant of…Read more Fire
We Built This City …
For me, nothing sums up the Spirit of Christmas better than this cute and slightly silly video. It's for fun, it's for the family and it's for a worthy charity. And I'm delighted to say that 75,000 people agree with me because it has taken the number 1 slot on the official UK charts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iEB8bfP7wE…Read more We Built This City …
Lily the Pink
Important Announcement: There will be no Track of the Week this week as Crotchety Man is indisposed. He is suffering from a bad case of this year's seasonal ailment and has completely run out of medicinal compounds. In the meantime, here is a very silly piece of sixties nostalgia, curtesy of The Scaffold, the comedy,…Read more Lily the Pink
Theme for an Imaginary Western
Sometimes it's easy to choose a track of the week. More often it's hard. This morning was shaping up to be one of those difficult days. The Crotchety Couple have had a few days in which nothing quite goes according to plan. On Monday we went to a Christmas Carnival. Going via my dad's it…Read more Theme for an Imaginary Western
Waiting
According to Wikipedia, "Advent is a season observed in many Christian churches as a time of expectant waiting". It's the same in non-religious communities, too, because it's also when little children start waiting for a jovial old man with a long white beard, dressed in a bright red suit, to come down the chimney to deliver…Read more Waiting
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