So many nautical terms are open to misinterpretation by landlubbers that anyone poised to set sail really needs to know a gash fanny from a cunt splice; failure to do so could result in kissing the gunner’s

Family feuds can drag on for decades. We’ve all known siblings who had a big bust-up over something years ago, something nobody can even remember anymore, and still refuse to be in the same room as one another,

The great sea change, believed JG Ballard, was the assassination of President Kennedy. The author whose theory was expanded in his 1970 collection of stories, ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’, saw the shocking events of November 22 1963

I know some of you out there are regular Radio 4 listeners and I know some of you are familiar with the station’s forays into the world of situation comedy. I myself only find a couple of

The Great British shopping experience as it had been known for generations received its first vision of the future at precisely the halfway point of the twentieth century – when Sainsbury’s opened their first self-service ‘supermarket’

16 million private records leaked online, including credit card transactions linked to email addresses, dates of birth, telephone numbers – the work of hackers yet again. Not nice, this is true; but context counts for a lot

Young people discover a new way to enjoy themselves that doesn’t adhere to the official social guidelines and the government intervenes on behalf of those it doesn’t affect under the guise of doing so on behalf of

Hello Raccoonistas. I have been away for a while. Some things have diverted me. But I could not let this weekend pass without a voice. 70 years since the end of the Second World War. I

Art has the ability to facilitate change, particularly how one looks at the world and the people in it. Both novels and albums have done it for me at different times of my life, but before either

Collective hysteria can take many forms. One of the first examples I was ever exposed to was ultimately benign and came in October 1973. I was watching ‘John Craven’s Newsround’ covering the chaos that accompanied The Osmonds

Bachelor is still a word that conjures up a certain antiquated cool; it evokes images of glamour, both in the surroundings a bachelor knows as home and in his swish sartorial uniform. One thinks of convertible sports cars, jet-setting

It may surprise you to know that we on the management side of the Raccoon Arms have occasional episodes in our lives that don’t involve pulling pints and breaking-up fights. Both me and ‘er upstairs have each enjoyed