So, here we go: only a couple of weeks left before I am officially made redundant, and there’s still a lot left to be doing.
Obviously, regular readers (or at least those who visit my blog via the actual site, rather than the feed-reader types) will know that I’m looking to go into business for myself, [...]

Hmm. I appear to be my own boss.
This is not exactly through choice; it’s because the recession has led to my employer feeling obliged to give me a month’s notice. After the initial bit of feeling somewhat shell-shocked, and saying things on the phone like “uh-huh. uh-huh” without really making a great deal of sense, [...]

Sometimes there’s things about my local area and/or my local authority that I am a bit ashamed of. Sometimes there’s things about my local area and/or my local authority that I am proud of. Saltwell Park represents both of these, displaced somewhat in time.
When I was studying for my GCSEs, I did a project on [...]

I have a nagging feeling that the teachers at my son’s school might have got the somewhat erroneous impression that I’m a racist, fascist bigot. Although it’s also possible that they might not have got this impression.
Either way, the mere possibility of this impression occurring is not something that is likely to occur on a [...]

It was one of our “family outing thingummies”.
There’s currently an event on in NewcastleGateshead (the gestalt entity formed from Newcastle and Gateshead councils to promote events across the two) called EAT! Newcastle Gateshead, which is not, as it may initially sound, a command to consume the region, but is instead a festival of food.

This started [...]

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen something of a return to our ‘Summer Days Out’ plan where at least once every weekend we try to take a trip out somewhere with the kids, to see something a bit different (you know, other than “shops”) and generally have a nice family day out.
Discovery Museum
At the [...]

I had thought that it might be nice to mark the occasion of the 1,000th post on this blog with a special post. Unfortunately, it would appear that I’ve missed it. If you delve back through my archives, you will see that technically, I’ve produced more than 1000 blog posts by now, as I did [...]

I was ambling through my site statistics, which I keep a vague eye on, and thought I’d share with you some of the things people are searching for before they end up at ThePickards…

+absinthe pissing +blood — I rather feel that someone who has been drinking so much absinthe that they are now pissing [...]

I recently noticed that I had posted my 1,000th tweet on twitter, since I started on January 22nd. That is 1,000 tweets in 92 days, or an average of just under 11 tweets per day.
And when I remarked that I had posted my 1,000th tweet, @scrumph remarked that he had reached the similar milestone of [...]

I asked my elder son, BTP, what he wanted to be when he grew up, at about the time he was starting school last year (aged nearly 5).
“An actor or an astronaut.”
This hasn’t changed much in the six months or so since. I’ve explained to him that it is certainly possible for him to try [...]