Never mind the Bagpuss, here’s the Pingwings

Some time in the 1990s when I bought my first Windows computer, it came with a Pingu screensaver and game, which I thought was pretty cool. Everyone knows about Pingu but I sometimes wonder if I am the only person who remembers the Pingwings. Sometimes I think I imagined them, but no, they did exist, and at least one other person remembers them too.

Book review: The Lost Women of Rock Music

I sometimes find myself having to explain punk rock to women my own age who weren’t part of it. On one occasion, someone said to me: why did you like punk, wasn’t it very male and aggressive?

On the contrary, I said, punk was great for women because lots of women were making music where they had not had the chance before. I’ve always believed in this line and until recently it never crossed my mind that after punk this didn’t really carry on.

Expert Women – the answer to Middle-Aged White Bloke Night?

The good news. The BBC is advertising for women to join a pool of experts available for interview on their specialist subject. They are putting on  a free “media familiarisation day” for women experts interested in appearing on television, radio and online as contributors or presenters.

The bad news. They’ve got a whole list of things they want experts in, but “music” isn’t one. “Women in music” is.

Fuller working lives – thank you, but I’ve already had one

Today the government has announced a new strategy under the title Fuller Working Lives for getting older people back into the workplace. “Calling on employers to boost the number of older workers and ensure they are not writing people off once they reach a certain age,” they say. That’s nice of them because everyone my age knows what it’s like to get knocked back when looking for work.

So what is the government actually  going to do to help us?

The wrong New Year resolutions

It’s the end of the year, and blog posts are infecting the internet with words like “mindset”: the answer, apparently, to being healthier, richer and more successful next year. I gave up New Year’s resolutions years ago so I’m shrugging off the advice as nothing more than an excuse for a bit of buzzword bingo.

But there are some things I can’t shrug off.