Nicky Bond's Blog, page 28

Back to (Thinking About) the Future...

Kamala has no CLUE what I'm on about.

What a difference a week makes! Or perhaps that should say, what a further continuation of last week's COVID rules, a week makes. Does that even make sense? Probably not. To be honest, my head has stopped caring about such writing basics as clarity, coherence, and sense. I'll be forgetting full stops next
As I predicted last time (well, me along with everyone else), the rules have changed again for some parts of the country. Those parts include mine, my parent...

To Plan Or Not To Plan...

I've no idea when actual Autumn starts, but as far as I'm concerned, it's begun. I know this because a few days ago I woke up to fog, and as I type this very sentence I am wearing a jumper. Case closed.

Me, right now, in a jumper!Autumn usually prompts me to feel refreshed and raring to go. I buy an academic diary, I batch cook hearty meals for the weeks ahead, and I plan the following term's work, right up to Christmas. You can take the girl outta teaching but you can't take the teaching outta t...

Choose (Pretend) Life...

Almost exactly like this
but without the cat.About a year ago, I turned up to a family get together at my parents' place, to be greeted by my then three-year-old nephew in a gendered-nurses' costume with shiny pink Disney heels. (Proper cute tbh.) He asked me if I had anything wrong with me that he could fix. I said, 'Ooh yes! I have period pain. My tummy is sore.' This was the wrong answer. He replied, 'Nooo. Not in real life, in pretend life!' I explained that in pretend life I was in tip top ...

A Walking Tour of Somewhere Else...

Ah Tenet. Your charms were lost on me. But 
I thoroughly enjoyed being back in a cinema, in
a dentist's chair with a cherry coke. Upsides.

Breaking News: I'm on holiday. I'm writing this today, three whole days before I went away. Or, to put it another way, I wrote this last week, but I'm typing these words in real time. I am living in the moment, even though it's a moment last Friday. Perhaps because I saw time-twisting Tenet last week, this makes perfect sense to me. (My three word review? Not fo...

How To Be A Winner...

How's your self-esteem today? Buoyant? Dwindling? Elusive? Perhaps you'd prefer me not to enquire right now but come back when you're feeling a little more marvellous. If we ignore the psychological research for a sec, most people understand self-esteem as the positivity they feel about themselves. With the technical research added in, we know that age and life circumstances can affect its levels, and experiencing trauma can knock everything off balance. So, I'll repeat the question. How's your ...

The Actual Power of Books...

Boris Johnson was trolled by a library worker, or so the story ran last week. During his speech to some unimpressed school children, the books displayed behind his head told their own story. Betrayed, Resistance, Fahrenheit 451, and most memorably, The Twits. It later transpired that the librarian in question had left months before the speech. The perfectly curated book arrangement was aimed at her employers, not the PM after all. 

The Twits
This was read to me
 in Reception class.It doesn't really...

My Book is Better Than Your Pot...

My spokesperson, Doctor Who, will 
apologise on my behalf.Looking back, it seems every time I've done a book update over the past few months, it's been full of doom and gloom. If it wasn't lockdown brain fog, it was STUPID EDITING. And if it wasn't STUPID EDITING, it was my inability to land on a title. All in all, I've vented far too much on the readers of my weekly nonsense, and I can only apologise. 

This update will be far more upbeat. Cross my heart, pinkie promise, and all that stuff. The go...

The Normality of Hope...

The word normal means 'conforming to the standard or the common type.' Thank you, Ms Dictionary. But this is a subjective and changing standard. It doesn't explain how that standard is reached, or to whom it applies. A more user-friendly definition could be something like, normal is what you know. It's what is standard for you personally. My experience of normal is very different from yours, just as yours is from mine. And when an aspect of your life isn't the average, the mainstream, the standa...

Has TV Peaked Too Soon?...

Not quite, but nearlyWe're coming to that time of year. When, despite it being full-on Summer outdoors, the winds of change are in the air. If you sniff hard enough and dream with all your might, you can just smell the hint of a crisp Autumn morning. September is a-coming, folks! And you KNOW how happy that makes me. I'm not going to rehash that same old, same old blog again. I think you know my seasonal feelings by now. But things do feel different this year. Like everything in 2020, I wonder i...

What's For Christmas Now?...

By the April of 2016 there had been more than enough hints that the year needed writing off and starting again. We'd lost Bowie, Wogan, Wood, and Prince. Brexit had split the country into ideologically opposed camps, and T***p and F****e were aberrations with too much screen time. It couldn't get any worse. 
Hahahahahahahahaha *Rolls around on the floor, laughing hysterically before convulsing into loud sobs* How innocent we were! How little we knew! What a rose-tinted time to be alive! Fast-forw...