The world?s only British matador is, apparently, retiring. Asked why he was retiring, he responded: ?Well, in order to be a matador, you need 100% of your faculties...well...90% of your faculties.? That made me giggle, for some reason. ...

I'm currently looking for somewhere to live, which means I spend the greater portion of my working day staring at the gumtree, looking for flats that fall into my very specific criteria: location, price, size, convenience, shower pressure, the usual. However I'm finding that, while I'm reasonably flexible in all of these areas, I immediately discard any advert that contains the following heinous ...

While I constantly maintain a sort of low-level state of general health (blocked nose, brain fatigue, insomnia, lower back pain), it's actually pretty rare that I am stricken with an illness that is so severe that I can't make it into work. I mean, every time I wake up with symptoms that you might associate with severe flu/being dead, but I find if I just 'fight through them', they rapidly dissip ...

So, I?m sitting at this gig the other day, and I?ve got a couple of thoughts chasing round in me old brick, two of which are of pertinence today: The first was, well, before I started this here blog, I was already a pretty active member of the old blogging community, checking out all your sites and things, making comments, occasionally guest-hosting here and there. And something I?d often ask oth ...