The debonair Basil Marigold's

I love facts; Little ones, large ones. The more obscure the better. Profundity is also great too. I came across a fact, via Twitter. Twitter is a source of wonderful facts, every now and again. This fact was a jaw dropper. For what reason? Because it marks the beginning of the end of a British tradition. What, for Many years, powered the empire and its military Jewel, the Royal Navy. Both consigned to  the past in importance and influence. It flows from this graph. A relatively harmless looking graph. It shows where from the United Kingdom took its energy source to power its daily life of; lights, televisions, factories and heating. It drills the information down to hourly. As you can see we are 'gas' hungry with nuclear and wind following. However, why this graph is a profound graph and marks the beginning of a new era is in the time from midnight to 05:00 in the morning. This marks the first 5 hours in British history since 1882, when the first steam powered ...

I have reached forty. In age. Not yet in IQ, according to some closer friends (I think that's in a few more years!). I have not, as of yet, reached my mid-life crisis. Who knows what that'll mean. Possibly a tattoo, and a motorbike or worse, a tattoo of a motorbike! I dread to think. Though maybe not as much as my wife, I suppose. However, with the onset of physical pre-middle age I have found that my body is not quite as supple as it has been over the last decade. There is a reason my nickname during my thirties was 'Mr Rubber band'. This elasticity is beginning to fade. To enable me to return to my former glory I have recently signed up for Pilates! (Yes, I know, I didn't believe a Roman Governor invented an entire form of training. - Could not have been all bad then, who knew? I came across Pilates a while ago. A lady at my previous workplace was a practitioner of the art and recommended it to me. This was a few years ago. It never materialised tho...

For those of us who have a passion for maritime research and let's be honest, who doesn't! Today's news marks a very sad day for us all. For a couple of reasons; one, forever amusing. The other, an actual scandal! For some peculiarly British reason, people who run major companies seem to have a massive over-optimistic belief in the sensibility of the British public. This was again proved by the building of a £200m polar maritime research vessel. Some marketing genius; One imagines them sat, sipping Starbucks coffee and oiling their hipster beard and having a thinking shower in an office; painted in primary colours. no chairs, just beanbags. The wizard thinker decides to hold a public contest to name this £200m vessel. Let's through it open to the public, he/she says. You see the problem already? No boundaries.  That's great in a sterile think space. In the public sphere and with the record of British public - have you ever driven down the Lara Croft way, in ...

For the past few years we have, oddly, found ourselves visiting Abbeys. A lot of this has been driven by our Englih Heritage membership. Yesterday, we visited Roche Abbey. It is nestled, like many Abbeys are, deep within a valley. This valley happened to be in South Yorkshire. Not far from the town of Maltby. I am not sure what Maltby is famous for, if anything (it had a munitions factory during WW2. When Londoners from Enfield came to work, created a district of housing called, little London). Again, like some of the other Abbeys the approach is narrow and descending. The added bonus to the access to Roche Abbey, is that this approach is 'cobbled'. A marvellous, unplanned, test for our aging vehicle!  The impressive transept remains at Roche Abbey. Car, intact, arrived at the car park. A term used loosely. We then went further down the pot holed path/road to the gatehouse of the abbey. There was also a visitor centre, a house. I'm not aware of the history of the house. It ...

2016 is proving a particularly tough year if you happen to be a musical genius. The great, musical, one-offs are being snatched from us: Firstly, Bowie was taken away, and now another artist, known by only a single name (and at one point, not even by a name but a symbol!) has gone, too. His name was, Prince. Prince, for those that are unaware, was arguably, one of the most important artists of the last 40 years. The proliferation of African American musical styles from; funk, R&B, hip-hop and soul owes something in someway to the music of, Prince. Along with, Michael Jackson and James Brown he brought music from the streets into the mainstream and then became a global superstar. His blend of outright funk, allied with a talent for producing some of the most beautiful lyrics made him unique. He stood apart from the music of his time. Artistically, in much the same way as, David Bowie, he was decades ahead of his contemporaries. Prince, knew this. He knew his own talent. He o...

The Goblin King 1986: I was 10 years old. There was a film released called, Labyrinth. At the time puppetry was quite popular in Hollywood. The CGI of its time, I guess. It's a wacky film, but at the time I loved it for this reason. It also had, apart from puppets, human antagonists. One of these was the goblin king, Jareth. A 10 year old me, knew him as Jareth. The nearly 40 year old me now knows him as, David Bowie. His death was announced this morning, at the age of 69. He'd been fighting cancer for 18 months according to the press release. This fact, seemingly, only known to immediate friends and families. This weekend passed, I'd been listening to his new album, Black Star, on Spotify. His latest release, in a career that stretches back to the mid to late 1960's. I listened, enjoying the music, unbeknownst to me the artist who created it, delivered it, was dying and no more than 2 days from death. A legend. Robin Ince, posted these words on Twitter this mo...

One of my favourite sports is darts. It is a very simple game. As a sport it requires great levels of trained skill and, occasionally, a little bit of luck. However, when played well, it can be the most exciting sport to watch because it has such excitement and drama, intertwined with a gladiatorial aspect of one man, or women versus another opponent. Currently, with BBC coverage available, the BDO (British Darts Organisation) world championship is taking place with the final tonight. I started watching many years ago and I've sadly watched the BDO after the great schism, decline in quality as some of the best players split with the BDO to form the PDC in the early nineties. Up until this point the BDO was the monopoly organisation, from where you could start in your local pub team. If you had talent you could then become a county player and take part in the inter county leagues (I discovered only yesterday that both, Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire county games are played at, Pin...