There's a big difference between 'awesome' and 'awful'. And that's strange. Both words derive from 'awe', which originally just meant 'fear'. So 'awesome' should mean 'instils a certain trepidation' while 'awful' should have the more emphatic meaning, 'terrifying'. The use of 'awe' in the Bible to describe the mortal response to God's presence is thought to have…Read more Annie, Let’s Not Wait
pop
Down Under
Australia is sometimes known as "the land down under" so it's fitting that the biggest hit by the Aussie band Men At Work should be called Down Under. It tells of an Australian who travels the world and the people he meets along the way. There's a woman on a hippy trail who makes him…Read more Down Under
Down River
Here's a Track of the Week from the guilty pleasures vault. It's old, it's simple and it's of a genre you might call folk/pop. But don't turn the web page just yet. Like many folk songs it's a sad song; like most pop songs it's easy on the ear. But it binds the listener to the torturer's rack, ratcheting up the…Read more Down River
Local Boy …
It's funny, sometimes, how one thing leads to another. For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For…Read more Local Boy …
China In Your Hand
Back in 1987 I was a freelance software developer. In the autumn of that year I was working on a contract at offices some 15 miles from Leicester where I lived then, driving north up the A46 in the mornings. It was an easy journey. The road was fairly straight and not too busy. And it wound…Read more China In Your Hand
Aviation
So far this year there have been about 40 posts on the Crotchety Man blog. Of those only six have carried the 2010s tag and one of them was an appreciation of that great old campaigner Bob Dylan - not exactly up-to-the-minute news. I felt I was in a temporal rut. It was time to break out, to find something…Read more Aviation
Big Yellow Taxi
It's been a rather miserable summer in the UK so far. Here in the middle of England there's hardly been a day when it didn't rain or at least threaten to. There have been sunny periods, too, but I've lost count of the times we planned to go out for the day and at the…Read more Big Yellow Taxi
Lady Rachel
From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us. There's a fine line, sometimes, between a curious dream and a terrifying nightmare. The flimsy tissue-paper barrier between benign and malignant worlds, between the familiar and the unknown, is conjured up perfectly for us by Kevin Ayers in his song Lady Rachel.…Read more Lady Rachel
Maria Browne
It was the 100th anniversary of the start of the battle of the Somme the other day. The battle lasted the best part of 5 months. 20,000 men died on the first day; one million were killed or injured all together. It is difficult to imagine how we can inflict such misery on ourselves and yet there was…Read more Maria Browne
This Wheel’s On Fire
I remember walking down Putney High Street back in 1968. It was summer and I had time to kill. In the late sixties Putney was a rather dull part of south west London; it probably still is. After so many years I can only guess why I was there. It was where my dad worked and it must have…Read more This Wheel’s On Fire
Crotchety Man 