Dan McNeil's Blog

I enjoy shopping.  I enjoy the process of going and looking at nice things and coming home with more nice things than I had before I left the house.  I guess I'm a bit of a magpie.  Although not everything I buy is shiny. Many things are shiny though. Today I went over to Canary Wharf.  I remember years ago when nobody was there at weekends and there was a Tesco Metro and a few sad-looking shoe shops.  But these days it's a proper shopping centre. I thought I may look for some new shirts.  I don't actually need any - in the traditional sense of the word - but it's always nice to add a little more variety into the wardrobe. But shirt shops are so intimidating.  Why do they need quite so many staff?  Why do the staff always follow you around silently, hovering just out of sight waiting to pounce if you should show any interest in a shirt.  I don't tend to buy "plain" shirts, and so it often takes me a while in shops to find the small se...

I never really remember my dreams, and so it's unusual for me that I do recall quite some detail about last night's dream. I was in my office.  Not my real office, of course. But there's a tall, square-sided glass building which seems to function as my office.  I was looking out of the window at the planes flying overhead.  The "dream" office is definitely in London, although not in Chiswick where my real office is.  More likely in Edgware Road where my first office in London was. And then I saw a missile fire up from amongst the low buildings and into the sky.  Suddenly, the engine of a plane came drifting down. Yes drifting - not falling - and hovered outside the office window for a few minutes. It was close enough that the office was shaking.  The flight number (SK996 for those who care) was written on the engine. And so this concerned me, as I was flying to Las Vegas from Heathrow that evening, and I wondered whether the airport would still be ope...

We lost one of our guinea pigs recently.  My lost, I mean "she died" of course. We didn't put her down somewhere and forget where we'd put her. It's a strange situation when a pet dies. Obviously there's an emotional connection, and it's sad. Although at the same time, it's important to retain some perspective.  It's OK to feel sad, but I'm not going to be taking any days compassionate leave from work to grieve.  Which is why it is strange that we did manage to give a complete stranger the impression that we were grieving heavily.  Let me explain. So of all our guinea pigs, Marmalade was one of the special ones.  She had an operation for bladder stones around two years ago.  Guinea pigs don't cope well with general anaesthetic   She recovered well initially but then her weight started to drop. With guinea pigs, this is a bad sign.  So we were hand-feeding her and eventually even giving her daily injections of subcutaneous fluids.  At so...

From time to time, I find myself descending into a spiral of clicking on Wikipedia.  You go to look for one thing, such as "what's the name of the brewery who own the Queen Vic in Eastenders?  I can remember the one from Corrie but not the one from Eastenders".   And so, I find out that the brewery sold the pub many years ago, and it's passed through the Mitchell family lots and is now owned by Danny Dyer. Apparently. But then curiosity takes me into clicking on the production of Eastenders. Ever since I was a kid I've had a fascination with how TV shows are produced.  Back in the day, I went around Granada Studios Tour in Manchester several times.  I wasn't interested in the immersive parts - you know, the bits where an "East German Guard" got on the tram and everyone had to pretend to be scared. I found that all a bit silly, and embarrassing - but I absolutely loved the parts where they showed you cameras and told you how things were made. So a...