For more than 70 years, a 32-page passport with a dark blue cover, with the lion and unicorn crest in gold was the identification UK citizens needed to leave their island. After Brexit, one of the most urgent and vital questions remained: Could the blue passport come back?
Back in the spring, in the UK, we had our first lockdown to bring the coronavirus under control. We never dreamed we’d have another. That’s why we never gave StayAtHome a number. Until now.
We said goodbye to Play for Today in 1984. These are some of my favourite milestones in the strand of dramas.
In 2012, the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that, after 244 years, fifteen editions and selling more than 7 million sets of its volumes, it was going out of print. The 32 volumes and 44 million words of the 2010 edition were its last.
The travel agency is another casualty of COVID.
The book of dreams is dust.
My little iPod Nano has been around the world with me. (Twice.) Surely it would be easy to find its like elsewhere.
Risk your life for a floral teatowel? Not so much. Flour? Now you’re talking.
Fax machines are vanishing from the NHS. By order. Although they are still surprisingly healthy in other parts of the world.
Cafés. Remember them? It seems not so long ago that we could meet a friend for a coffee and a cake, or perk up a trip to the shops with a timely cup of tea… In fact, it was a week ago today that the UK government closed all sit-down dining venues, including restaurants, pubs,…
Remember those fuzzy school handouts in purple? The ones that came with the complimentary side-effect of a hangover? Sadly gone. Geography lessons will never be the same.
In January 2020, the UK lost a further 19 Debenhams department stores. More casualties of the British High Street crisis. So, should we put our mourning outfits on?
A note written especially for you. By hand. A rare thing, except maybe, perhaps, at Christmastime.
Once a useful measuring instrument for finding out where you were at sea, perhaps the astrolabe can guide us when the opinion polls are all at sea.
Bashful brides or canny cohabitors? Probably neither
(...and sometimes from a bus)
What happens when words disappear
