Christmas is with us again and all those festivities we associate with the Christmas season. Chances are you’ll be singing carols, giving and receiving presents and, for many of us, enjoying a turkey dinner on Christmas Day. Ever wonder why turkeys are called turkeys? They don’t come from the country of Turkey – or Türkiye…
I have to confess to being a Bruce Springsteen fan, at least a fan of his earlier albums back in the 1970s and early 80s. The turning point was the release of his sixth album, Nebraska, in 1982. This was very different to what had gone before. Rolling Stone reviewed it like this: After ten…
Back in August, I picked my son up from Stansted Airport and we stopped to buy some food from the McDonalds store that adjoins the airport. This meant visiting a place called Southgate Park and if you do the same thing yourself, BEWARE! It was nearly midnight, we had never been there before and all…
Today is the day the clocks change so, if you haven’t yet reset yours, pause and go do it now. I always enjoy this change back to GMT because it means getting an extra hour in bed. The downside, of course, is that the sun sets an hour earlier and this day is a very…
Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas (which means “son of encouragement”), sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet. (Acts 4:36-37) What do we learn here about Barnabas? Firstly, his real name was Joseph. Secondly, he was a Levite, that is that he…
My last thought was a fourth one based in the world of bags and containers and I fully expected it to be the last of a short series. You may recall that we were thinking about leather wineskins and a saying of Jesus: “And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine…
I’m old enough to recall the battlelines drawn in the 1980s over church worship. The church that Karen and I attended back then was still using the 1936 Methodist Hymn Book together with the original edition of Songs of Fellowship. I remember vividly those people who would enter the church; approach the table stacked with…
Welcome to a third thought emanating from the world of bags and containers. In the first, we looked at baggage and luggage. In the second, we encountered portmanteaus and portmanteau words. Today we’re thinking about pokes and what’s inside them. I suspect you’re now wondering what exactly a poke is. You might have dredged up…
Pictured here is a very old example of a Portmanteau. This particular example was made for George Washington and is held by the Museum of the American Revolution. What makes it a portmanteau is that it’s a bag or case with two separate parts joined together. This Thought is a Part 2 and in an…
One thing you’ve probably discovered about me is that words and the origins of words fascinate me. In particular, I can use an everyday phrase or word and suddenly wonder about it. Take the other day, for example, I was putting a suitcase into my boot and it prompted a realisation that I had no…