The debonair Basil Marigold's

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

Since last August we've had family membership of English Heritage. We have managed to find ourselves taking advantage of this in; Devonshire (God's own Country, by the way, He, being Devonian. Seems patently obvious to me), Yorkshire (God's Holiday county, when He's not in Devon) and the East Midlands. These visits have been lovely, mainly because I like my buildings like I like my knees, ruined. It is the various state of ruin that intrigues me. From pieces of wall, that provide a foundation footprint (Roman Forts on Hadrians wall), to near complete structures (Dartmouth Castle, being a great example) and then, everything in between. They have, at times, both surprised and disappointed my expectations. Mostly, surprised. And some, well, they have quite frankly struck me with awe. Awe, both in structural size and the human ingenuity required to build structures (and wealth, always comes back to wealth. Privilege too, of course). The highlights so far have been the