The View From Lower Down

I had a birthday this August. I won't tell you what day or which birthday, because identity theft. Suffice it to say, I'm now in my late 20's. Now, I knew how old I was for most of the year, which was good. But then, in about May, I decided: Actually, I'm a lot closer to {my age circa August 2020} than I am to {my age circa August 2019}. So I started calling myself that age. Obviously, if I needed to sign something official, I would have given my real age; although in that case, they would more likely need my date of birth, which I do know. Towards the end of July, I realized that my birthday was coming up, and therefore I was going to turn a year older. However, by this point, I had already been calling myself that age for 3 months, and I was used to only getting older on my birthday, so I convinced myself I was getting another year older on my birthday. As if this wasn't confusing enough, I then made the tragic mistake of telling my family this, so ever...

SPOILERS FOR MAMMA MIA (MM1) AND MAMMA MIA: HERE WE GO AGAIN (MM2) AHEAD Just to be clear, I'm not the first person to talk about this and I doubt I'll be the last. There are a load of continuity issues between MM1 and MM2, especially concerning Donna's diary entries, but that's not what this post is about. Want to know more? Click here . Or here . 1. Okay. We'll start by addressing the most obvious one. In the first movie, it is mentioned that Sophie is 20 years old. Therefore, as the first movie was released in 2008, that would mean she was born in 1988. Seems legit. However, in the second movie flashback scenes, it is clearly stated that it is set in 1979. All you number crunchers out there will have worked out that that means Donna was pregnant for NINE YEARS! Believe it or not, this is actually wrong. MM1 was released in 2008, but it is actually set in 1999. SIDE NOTE/QUICK QUIZ: After 1987, there were many years where at least one number in the y...

To learn a new house rule to make the game more fun, scroll to the bottom of this post. DISCLAIMER: The title of this post is clickbait; it should actually read How to Not Lose at Monopoly If you want to actually  win at Monopoly, I highly recommend the book The Indisputable Existence of Santa Claus by Drs Hannah Fry and Thomas Oléron Evans, which has an entire chapter devoted to the subject and was used as a source for some of this post. It also makes a great stocking filler. Having properly tested the techniques described in this post, I can confirm that they are no use in helping a player to win, especially in later stages of a game. The techniques described below are best used in what the official Rules call Speedy Monopoly . This is where instead of waiting until all but one of the players has gone bankrupt, the game just stops after a certain amount of time and a winner is decided by totalling each player's money and properties after selling their assets (prope...

I've realised that I've been coming up with a lot of new words recently; some of them useful, some not so much. Anyway, I've decided to write them down in order to help get them in common lexicon. Each of the examples below will contain: The word The definition The history/etymology An example sentence Detangiblise (alt. Detangify, Abstrify, Abstralise) (v.) - make a tangible noun into an abstract noun. This came about because I watched the start of Amadeus on NT Live (depending on when you read this, that link (to the full play on YouTube) might not be active). What the story is about is irrelevant, but the point is that the play opens after all the events have taken place. The rest of the play happens before that. Afterwards, I discussed it with my Dad, who watched the whole thing. Me: I found that bit at the beginning very confusing. Dad: That's probably because it's set after the rest of the play. M: Ah, so they did a Blood Brothers on it? D: Ye...

My bad. I forgot to post the answer to this riddle . Sorry. Chances are, you recognized half of those songs at most. The answer, of course, lies in some information I didn't include. See the songs again, this time with the artists. Strangers in the Night (1966) - Frank Sinatra All That Jazz (1972) - Chita Rivera I'm Too Sexy (1991) - Fred and Richard Fairbrass It Wasn't Me (1999) - Orville Richard Burrell CD OJ Rastafari (2016) - Njie Efunden Daphne Still too obscure? I don't blame you. Strangers in the Night (1966) - Frank Sinatra All That Jazz (1972) - Velma Kelly (Character in the musical Chicago , originally played by Chita Rivera) I'm Too Sexy (1991) - Right Said Fred It Wasn't Me (1999) - Shaggy Rastafari (2016) - Daphné I'll admit, Strangers in the Night is still a bit obscure. Here's why I included it . In case it's still not obvious, the answer is Scooby-Doo ( Velma Kelly; Right Said Fred ; Shaggy ; Daphné ). You have no id...

In my house group (for non-Christian readers, this is a group of some of the members of my church, in this case ten when we all turn up) we do many activities: Our most common activities include: Doing some Bible study Singing some worship songs Discussing Christian book However, about every 3 weeks we have a social night, on which we do something a bit different, e.g. Have a shared meal Go bowling Go to a restaurant/pub/bar to eat Of course, since we've been in lockdown, meetings have been trickier. Using Zoom, we have all been able to meet, which is ok for Bible study and worship (tip: in order for everyone to hear the music well, one person should play the music from Spotify etc. through their PC using Share Screen and everyone else should mute). However, the social nights have been trickier to pull off. We managed a birthday party (bring your own cake), but a few weeks ago we decided to do things a little differently, something which seemed like a good idea...

Very quick. Five songs; one question. Strangers in the Night (1966) All That Jazz (1975) I'm Too Sexy (1991) It Wasn't Me (1999) Rastafari (2016) What's The Link? The Answer

Read Part One TL;DR: I have a new microphone; I'm starting a podcast. Great. What's the podcast about? Movies. The reviews that used to be uploaded on here will now be audio available. What can I listen to the podcast on? Nothing at the moment. I haven't recorded anything yet I don't yet know how to upload it to anything. When I've uploaded something to somewhere, you'll be the first to know. What's it going to be called? Accessible Movies (not because of the accessibility of the movies; because of my being a wheelchair user) What does that mean for the blog? It means that content will be changing. I've noticed since lockdown, that my blogs are getting a lot more views. Possibly that's because people are more bored, but I think it's because the content has changed. None of the reviews I've written since lockdown have been movie reviews, and they're just random stuff. Here's a breakdown of what's chan...

WARNING: This video will become unavailable tonight, Thursday 2nd July 2020. Watch it now or potentially never. A Midsummer Night's Dream from the Bridge Theatre is due to be broadcast TONIGHT, Thursday 25th June 2020, on National Theatre Live's YouTube page at 7pm GMT. You should definitely check it out if you are a fan of one or more of the below: Fourth wall jokes Audience interaction Comedy Beyonce (Her music; not her person) Gwendoline Christie (Her person; not her music) Dizzee Rascal (His music; not his person) Lightsabers (this might give you the wrong impression, so to clarify, this is just an 'own-brand' laser sword) Partying Magic Gymnastics Surprises ALL of the above are in the show. DISCLAIMER: Some parts of the show, especially the first bit, can be a bit dry and a lot confusing, but it's worth sitting through to see the really good bits. Trailer Clip (from the rehearsal of the play-within-a-play, Pyramus and Thisbe , performed ...

No,  A Midsummer Night's Dream from the Bridge Theatre isn't up yet. That's tonight. Again, I cannot recommend seeing that show enough. Link to my blog on the subject, including full set of links to clips, trailers and more This is a very different announcement, and it concerns the future of my blog. This blog is 614 words long and is just fluff, so if you want to find out about the important news, skip straight to Part Two . I mentioned in my last blog  that I have a secret project that I'm working on. Storytime! Hopefully, some of you noticed that this Sunday (just gone, 21 June) was Father's Day. Naturally, being me, I left it to the last minute to get a gift, but my Mum pointed out that he needed a proper microphone, because he's been recording some worship songs for the church. We'd even heard him talking on the phone about it with his brother, my uncle, who is a professional sound engineer. She also noticed one on Amazon for a decent price ...

You may remember that in a recent post I mentioned the following: Lockdown is an absolutely perfect opportunity to do one thing: Get creative and start on a project  Watch Netflix. Of course, that was a slight misnomer because I then made several watching recommendations, mostly through All4 or Amazon Prime Video. Also, I can give some updates: My brother has finally watched  Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist and loves it. The series has now finished but the entire series is on All4 still. A second series of  Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist  has been commissioned but obviously, they can't start filming yet, meaning a release date is currently unclear. Rick and Morty S4 is now on NetFlix. I have added Cheers to the list. But that's not what this blog post is about. Above, I crossed out Get creative and start on a project, but I am not known to practice what I preach. I'm currently being SUPER-creative. Box-set binging is a demanding job, but it usually l...

This is part of an interactive adventure. To return to the start,  click here . You sit down and wait for the stranger to return. Three minutes is not a long time when it's all you have left to live, is it? Before you know what's going on, the egg timer goes off. This makes you jump and knock the button which activates the machine. A bright flash of light happens and Ben and Copernicus have disappeared! The last thing you see is the stranger bringing you your eggs. Darkness descends, then... Nothing. What happens next?

This is part of an interactive adventure. To return to the start,  click here . Well done! You got out of the lab! Unfortunately, though, you can't change fate and you were run over by a car on your way out. If you'd just sat tight, the stranger might have been able to save you, but now your body will remain undiscovered. Poor you. Go Back Start Again

This is part of an interactive adventure. To return to the start, click here . It's October 21st, 2015. You're Colin Brockwell, a young scientist in the prime of life. Your new invention is ready to be tested for the first time. You invite Ben, the work experience kid, and Copernicus, the lab's talking cat, to join you in testing it. But just before you can activate the machine, someone bursts into the lab. "You've only got three minutes to live!" The stranger says. "Isn't there anything you can do?" You reply. The stranger stops to think for a second. "Well, I could boil you an egg?" He says. He then starts an egg timer, leaves it on the floor and exits. What do you do? I get out of there as fast as I can - I don't want to die! I'll wait for my egg, thanks. I'll continue with the experiment. Science is bigger than just one man.

THIS INTERACTIVE STORY IS CURRENTLY STILL UNDERGOING CONSTRUCTION. UNTIL IT'S FINISHED, WHY NOT CHECK OUT SOME OTHER POSTS Current game status: 17% complete Before you play the game, please bear in mind that this game is rated 12; mainly for adult themes. For the full content warnings,  click here . Welcome! Tangents: The Game About Something Else is an interactive story loosely based on the play of [nearly] the same name. To start with, who do you want to play as? Colin - Colin is the lead scientist at the university, but there's something important he doesn't know yet...  (50% complete) Ben - Ben is the work experience kid at the university. This job is a lot more than he bargained for... (0% complete) Chris - Chris is a scientist who works at the university, and he has a surprise in store... (0% complete) Jo - Jo is another scientist at the university, and she's about to make an exciting discovery... (0% complete) Deirdre - Deirdre is Chris' mom. She ...