Dan McNeil's Blog

Euston station hasn't changed much.  It wasn't that long ago that I was there quite often, spending around one early morning a week traipsing my way across London to take an early train to Manchester, only to join the tail end of the Manchester rush hour to take a local train out to Guide Bridge.  Those were the days.  I speak as though it were a long time ago, when it was only 2011.  How quickly things fade into nostalgia. Before heading out of London this morning, I popped to the local shop to pick up the obligatory copy of the Guardian.  Standing in front of the chocolate bars was a woman wearing a cigarette vending machine around her neck.  She looked quite bored.  Well I'm sure it wasn't a thrilling occupation.  The guys in the shop made no reference to her, and all of the customers walked past her as though she weren't there.  I still have no idea what she was doing there. It's funny how a train journey which takes two hours f...

Sometimes I worry about myself.  Only sometimes. The other morning, it was just before 7am and I found myself in the changing room at a health club.  It wasn't the fact that I was at there at such a stupid hour of the day which worried me, it was what happened next. I was standing in the third bay of lockers, with the higher numbers, and I happened to be standing in front of locker 193.  And then it occurred to me that I am usually at the lockers with lower numbers, and instinctively I always use a locker which is a prime number.  This is easy when you're standing near the first 20 lockers, but in that second, rational thought deserted me, and I realised that I could only use the locker if 193 was prime. So there I was, standing with a pound coin in my hand trying to work out at 6.50am whether 193 is prime.  It didn't take me long to work out that it is prime, and I made it into my session on time for a 7am start.  I knew you'd be pleased. Now - jus...

I said I was going to write in regularly in this year, and this feels regular; certainly more regularly than last year. I have had a run of breaking things recently.  Of course, I don't believe in such nonsense, but I was hoping that things broke in groups of three - so that once I'd broken a third thing (the third thing to be broken was the screen on my phone) it'd stop, and I could carry on with life without having to continually pay for repairs to things - but as it happened, in taking my phone in and out of its case so many times, I managed to break the case.  So there's another one in the post to me from Amazon. This experience of breaking things has made me grateful for how immediate modern life has become.  When something breaks, it's just a couple of phone calls and usually within a day or two, your phone (or whatever) is repaired and working again. The run of breaking things extended to the strings of my badminton racquet (racket? I'm never sure.....

It seems it's the custom at this time of the year that the first time you speak to someone since the holidays, you start the conversation with "Happy New Year".  But how long are we supposed to do that for?  If I bump into someone at the end of January, am I still supposed to say "Happy New Year" - maybe with a bit of a sarcastic smile by then?   How about February?  March?  Am I supposed to still start the conversation with "Happy New Year" if there's a friend I don't see until August? I am not a great fan of New Year.  Admittedly the London fireworks were great this year, but I'm sure the Olympic ones will be better.  It's nice to see people, and nice to have a few cocktails (of which more later...) but it's possible to do that at any other time of year without the transport troubles and the inability to order a takeaway or pop out to the off-licence. Cocktails are always fun though.  This New Year, we decided to play by the C...

The word "home" has two meanings around this time of year.  To illustrate this, consider the two following conversations: Person A: "We're going away for Christmas, what are you up to?" Person B: "Nice.  We're staying at home this year" Person A: "Are you going home for Christmas this year?" Person B: "Yes, travelling up Christmas Eve and back the week after" For me - "home" always has the first meaning.  Home for me is the place I live, not the place I used to live.  I guess maybe it's a sign of age that the place where I grew up no longer is no longer synonymous with "home" in my mind. Forgive me if I seem rather grumpy, but Christmas seems to do that to me.  I don't know why, but as December progresses, I feel my grumpiness levels creeping up.  I very nearly had strong words with a woman who stepped in front of me when I was buying houmous in Waitrose a couple of days ago (*) The franti...

Although it may not entirely seem like it, when I write a blog post I usually have a good idea of where it's going before I start to write it.   Usually I've seen something, or read something, and it's made me go "oooh" (maybe even out loud) and so I write some words.  Not tonight. It's been an age since I last wrote in here, and so I've been thinking for a few days that I should write something but I just couldn't think of anything worth writing about.  I could think of a few small things, but no common thread to link them other than "things which I've thought in the past few days" and that's tenuous at best. But the way I see, a rambling and rather haphazard blog entry is better than no blog entry at all and so I'm going to start writing, and let's see where this goes.  Your guess is as good as mine... I was coming home on the tube last night after a run and dinner with a couple of friends.  It wasn't the world...

A while ago, I wrote a  post  about how we'd created a roof garden here in Wapping, London.  That was almost a year ago now, and so I thought it time to write a little more about what's been happening in the garden this year and what I've been up to in the garden over the past few weeks. Generally, this time of year is quite dull in the garden.  The tasks at hand are dead-heading and tidying and all the showy summer blooms are coming to an end.  We still have a few roses and fuschias putting in a last flash of colour, but the whole thing is starting to fade to green as autumn creeps on. A few things, such as the mixed tub of cornus and abelia above, as coming into their own at this time of year though.  The last few abelia flowers go wonderfully against the mixed foliage.  As autumn fades, the cornus leaves will fall, leaving the bright red stems which will see through the winter until growth starts again in the spring. Fuschias h...