tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32807583595331827242012-02-02T18:44:28.068-08:00Running fast, life right behind meGiles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.comBlogger101100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-63732866141249049522007-03-06T08:16:00.000-08:002007-03-06T08:18:52.127-08:00

Things that are that shouldn’t be. Things that aren’t but should.1. Joe Strummer is dead and Phil Collins is still alive.Why is serial adulterer, dreary prog-rocker turned winebar pop dirgester still kicking, while a true hero, a lyrical master and punk visionary Joe Strummer not?2. The NME is still publishing and The Face died.The NME, a junior common room of pant-wetting hyperbolists goes

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-27079872708794788612007-02-16T08:55:00.000-08:002007-02-21T02:15:50.799-08:00

"Alan Titchmarsh doesn't play punk" was my response to my friend Simon when he claimed that Radio 2 "is all punk, punk, punk!". But he had a point. Jonathan Ross plays punk on Radio 2 (he also plays classic reggae). Mark Radcliffe does. Ross is a fiftyniner, a hugely successful one (b.1960, but you know that doesn't matter). His chat show has a punk attitude - irreverent, rude, iconoclastic (

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-28158003071049398302007-02-14T05:45:00.000-08:002007-02-15T10:23:51.528-08:00

Come on, give it up you demographers! A fairly cursory bit of Googling of "fifty is the new thirty" reveals that market researchers, sociologists and commentators struggle to assign attributes to people by their age. One of the effects of the democratisation of the media through blogging, citizen news, social media - call it what you will - is that people group themselves (as opposed to being

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-43436385618814550702007-02-12T10:12:00.000-08:002007-02-09T09:24:11.878-08:00

Fantastic. The Monday after I was eulogising about Ben Goldacre's Bad Science column and suggesting it be on the front page of The Guardian, it is! Not the column itself, but a brilliant example of the power of rational thinking that it has engendered. An energetic fellow Bad Science enthusiast read Ben's piece on "Dr" Gillian McKeith on badscience.net and took her use of a bogus medical

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-66520001898306347462007-02-09T04:31:00.000-08:002007-02-09T05:24:57.616-08:00

I heard on The Today programme this morning that "You are what you eat" has supplanted Stephen Hawking's "A brief history of time" as the most borrowed non-fiction book in British libraries. Is this an indication that libraries, under constant pressure of closure, have bowed to the lowest common denominator and are simply "giving the public what they want"? And if so, what does that say about the

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-75407953081273130262007-02-05T13:17:00.000-08:002007-02-14T06:27:20.675-08:00

When I was still in my teens I swore I would stop wearing jeans the day I hit forty (it may even have been thirty). Ah, the militant certainty of youth. I still wear jeans, of course. Seventy-year olds wear jeans. You can wear what you damn well like, regardless of how old you are. Well, up to a point...Let me illustrate what I mean. Take trainers, for example. No, bear with me. I know it's a

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-88049651834424706622007-02-04T09:17:00.000-08:002007-02-14T06:26:07.255-08:00

How much should a man spend on his fiftieth birthday party? I've been planning mine in my head for a few months now. I want it to be more than just a normal bash, which nowadays usually amounts to getting a few friends together down the local gastropub. All very nice, don't get me wrong. But the Big Five Zero merits something special. And that means a little more outlay. However, my grand plans

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-9913118948734594422007-01-29T13:45:00.000-08:002007-02-14T06:23:41.528-08:00

I was never quite sure whether I was a baby-boomer or not. I've never met anyone who described themselves as one. So I don't hang out with 'boomers, clearly. I wiki'd it, and the definitions range, within the broad scope of "post war" (WW2), from 40s infants to 60s kids.But 'boomers are supposed to be reaching retirement age now. That's not me.Let's say you're born in 1949. You were 17 in 1966 -

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-47510490287801780852007-01-22T09:17:00.000-08:002007-01-22T09:25:34.106-08:00

Sites today: Flickr - share photos in online community; Delicious - non-linear way of accessing, storing and sharing info; Bloglines - easy way of keeping tabs on my fave blogs.

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3280758359533182724.post-27956186036549692712007-01-22T08:55:00.000-08:002007-02-14T06:29:50.129-08:00

This is a picture of Leigh on Sea in Essex. It was taken on a Nokia cameraphone. The sky cleared about 10 minutes later. I am an Essex man. And proud of it. I love the county where I spent most of my growing up. Much of that feeling comes from having spent so much of my youth on the Essex coast, walking the saltings, sailing the Blackwater with my father. My very cells contain Essex.

Giles Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17697095483697355106noreply@blogger.com0