“In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…” Kublai Khan is probably best known in the UK for the famous poetic fantasy by Coleridge. However the truth behind the legend of Kublai Khan is even more fantastic than the poem suggests.
Kublai Khan was a thirteenth century Mongolian prince who inherited the largest land [...]

I saw a shooting star tonight, which always cheers me up. I have seen more shooting stars than most people, because whenever it’s a clear night sky I’m always looking up, usually trying to pick out my favourite constellations. Seeing shooting stars is a byproduct of that, (along with a cricked neck)!
What are Shooting Stars? [...]

The last album written by Roger Waters for Pink Floyd was ‘The Final Cut’. The title had a number of meanings, including the fact that Waters would leave the band after this album.
I have all Pink Floyd’s albums on vinyl, but unfortunately I no longer play vinyl records, which meant I had to replace them with [...]

I have always been anti-TV. I love reading, so having a TV on in the room interferes with that. Whenever I watch a lot of TV, (more than an hour), I’m left with an empty, “what a waste of time” , feeling. I have never been able to put my finger on why I felt like [...]

Leamington Spa is a beautiful town with a lot of night life, however for too long it didn’t have a large capacity, live music venue. Groups were confined to local pubs that had the space and the enthusiasm to host a live band.
This has thankfully changed! For the past 12 months Leamington Spa has a brand [...]

The psychologist Oliver James looks at the modern world and tries to answer the conundrum;
“Why is it that despite the Western World being materially richer than it has ever been before, the middle classes are suffering from high rates of depression, anxiety, addiction and ennui?”
He examines the problem in different Capitalist cultures from the UK  and [...]

Why are many new films so long? I ask this question as someone who remembers when going to the Cinema involved watching TWO films: The Main Feature and the ‘B’ film. The ‘B’ film was shown first as a ‘warm up’ to the main act.
This was followed by an intermission where ice creams and chocolates were [...]

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.” Douglas Adams, the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
We all know the universe is big, the trouble is the [...]

Last week the weather was atrocious, yet around 20 runners still turned up at the Edmondscote track for their weekly interval session.
That’s what I love about marathons – you HAVE TO do the training. You have no choice if you want a good result.
This makes decisions about weather conditions really easy – there [...]

There are two full moons this month. The first on Wednesday 2nd December and the second on New Years Eve. Normally there is only one full moon each calender month, but every two to three years, a second full moon occurs.
This is commonly known as a “blue moon” because of its rarity. On New Years Eve [...]