ALT Quote from Owen Slot in The Times today: Even though there were no walk-up ticket sales, the queues outside in the cold started accumulating an hour before the doors opened, which was itself nearly two hours before a dart was thrown. First in through security were four mates from Chorley dressed as Mexican bandits. They were followed by Batman and Robin, Julius Caesar on crutches, five traffic cones, a pair of half-peeled bananas, six Smurfs and three blokes from Dorking in lederhosen.
ALT Quote from today's Times of London From Trevor Sorbie, the hairdresser's obituary. The cut that gave him the greatest satisfaction was the wig for a cancer patient at Princess Alice Hospice in Esher, Surrey. "A nurse said, 'Trevor, this lady is getting married at three o'clock, would you cut her wig for her? The only thing is she may die before then'," he told The Times in November 2024. "I'd never seen anyone close to death, but there was Tina, sitting in her wedding dress, with tubes coming out of her ... For the next 25 minutes we laughed and joked. I wasn't in a room with a dying woman, I was in a room with a woman who was getting married." She lived until the next day. Discussing his own funeral some years earlier, Sorbie suggested that it should be held in a nightclub rather than a church or crematorium. "My scissors and comb would be laid on my chest, and there would be a large vodka and tonic standing on the side," he said. "Those are my tools, and all three have helped me thr
ALT Text from Ken Palmer obituary "In May 1963, Palmer returned his career-best bowling figures against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge. With heavy rain falling on the eve of the match and convinced there would be no play the following day, Palmer went to the pub and drank copious pints of Guinness, only to be mortified when his room-mate, Roy Virgin, threw open the curtains the next morning to beautiful sunshine. A few hours later, Palmer was denied the opportunity to nurse his throbbing head for a little longer when his captain Harold Stephenson won the toss and elected to field. Palmer’s first two overs went for 40. Stephenson told him he knew he had been out drinking and said he was going to put him on at the other end, and if he didn’t take wickets his career at Somerset would be over. Palmer proceeded to run through the Nottinghamshire batting, finishing with 9 for 57, a wicket for every pint of the black stuff imbibed the previous evening."
ALT Quote from The Times of London newspaper : After graduating he worked for the children's and youth commissioner in Pennsylvania before moving to Baltimore in 1977, co-founding the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives to promote other possibilities than incarceration. "There was a gap in the system. Judges were being presented with either a probation sentence or a prison sentence. We used to call it the aspirin or a lobotomy. We thought there was a lot of room for alternatives," he said.
ALT When did Benedict Cumberbatch go from aspiring actor to a star with the world at his feet? For some it was Sherlock, which started in 2010 and won him an ardent following of "Cumberbitches". For others it was his Marvel films, including Doctor Strange, which was when the money started to roll in. But for his father, also an actor, it was a play his son did while at Manchester University. "After Dad saw me in Amadeus at university, he put his arm around me and said, 'You're better at this than I ever was. I cannot wait to support your career. I'm so proud of you," Cumberbatch tells me. There's a pause as he gathers himself, touched by the memory. "For a man to say that to his son is absolutely huge." He grins. "And it's not necessarily true ... But the generosity to go, 'Your turn now."
ALT Screenshot from today's Times of London the quote is "That created havoc with the dates of religious festivals, so in 1582 Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian calendar, still used today. It is somewhat more complicated than the old Julian calendar. The Gregorian calendar made years that are divisible by four leap years, except for those that are divisible by 100, which are not leap years, but with the exception of years divisible by 400, which remain leap years. This Gregorian calendar gives an average year of 365.2425 days, just half a minute longer than the solar year, and so it takes 3,300 years before the Gregorian calendar drifts out by a day from the seasonal cycle."
ALT Quote from BBC article 'This week reminded me of the original vision of social media, which was more social and less media. ... it can generate communities and pullulate with kindness and creativity rather than conspiracy and contempt.'