Raf’s Blog

Some Simple Facts about Scotland

I know you have just got a hair restoration job done and you are looking to go have some fun rest and everything else you can to show off your new look. So where do you go–Hmmm, how about Scotland..trust me you will love it.

In case you did’nt know, Scotland is the part of the United Kingdom. It shares its southern border with Great Britain and northern side with the North Sea. Its More

Jamie Style

If you’ve been here before then you’ll know that I do love my murder mysteries. Very much so. But that’s not all I love, of course. I am also a bit of a spontaneous cook, and sometimes I like to immerse myself in Coconut Oil and meat and have a go at making stuff (I don’t mean literally immerse myself: what are you, some kind of pervert?)

Now, if you’ve been watching TV recently then you’ll know that Jamie Oliver More

A Bit Of Grisly Never Hurt!

The internet is possibly my favourite thing ever and it may well be yours too, but no sweat, we can share, it’s big enough and growing all the time. One of the best things about it for a murder mystery lover such as myself – you know how much I loves it – is that I can keep in contact with all the other murder mystery lovers out there. Now, as great as this is – and it is great More

A Time To Fear

There are times in your life – things that happen, things that wake you up to how much things have changed in the last few years and where we are now as a civilization – which only come so often, and it’s a good thing, because if they happened any more often then life would be almost unbearable. One such thing happened to me the other day: I was asked to write something by hand at work. That’s right: half More

Oh, To Be…

Most people find that as they get older they wish that they were much-much younger again (I am one of them: I sincerely miss the days of being happy with being given a ten pound note at Christmas and being happy with one solitary voucher and its comet discount codes ). Which seems bizarre when the majority of us spend our entire childhood’s trying to imagine what it’s like to be older and grown up and able to do exactly More

Murder Mystery Is The Best Mystery

Some people dream of joining the Police force, some of becoming a university professor with so many letters in front of their name that it is no longer a name but, in fact, a jumble of alphabet; others of becoming a fireman or working their way up through the ranks in their office job. My dream is bigger and slightly more obscure than all of the aforementioned, if I do say so myself: I want to become the world’s foremost More

Crush: How to ask for her phone?

art prints

Many men prefer to sit at home over the weekend to drink with friends, scratched his belly and just lazy, just because they More

Mark Knows A Bit, I Can Tell You

Reading some book’s is a bit like going to a Comedy show that you have been looking forward to for ages and then discovering that the comedians are not as funny as you expected. Not only that but when you try to leave the comedy show you are struck by a mammoth sense of guilt, because you are a nice person and don’t want to have that horrible conversation in thr future where you pretend to know things that you clearly do not for fear of saying “I left early”. You have paid your money and you feel that you should at least see what’s to come. The terrible thing? You get to the end and realise that your gut instinct was correct: you should have made an early exit.

This can be especially true with murder mystery books, in my opinion. They can either be 1) Surprising, inventive etc or they can be 2) Predictable, boring, a carbon-copy made up of all the other murder mystery books that were ever written. Fortunately, not every book is like this, and sometimes one comes along that is truly stand-out amazing: one such book – the ONLY book in my opinion – would be The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon.

Now, I could tell you that it’s about a very un-typical boy who has Asperger’s syndrome and decides to write a murder mystery book (as I surely just have unless you had the good instinct to not read that bit) or I could tell you about the humour and the style which is amazing and thoroughly inventive. I won’t. I will simply say that it is crafted beautifully and is both intriguing and thoughtful, as well as sad in all the right places and easy to read, even when so drunk that you forget that words like Eponymous ever existed.

Thus I suggest you buy it. Go on, ok?

Fear Of Ovens

The cheap cookers at our university were malicious death-traps, just as nature and thousands of years of social conditioning and trends intended. Because what better a way to prepare someone for the dangerous post-university-world than to test them day-in-day-out with a horrific cooking death trap?
Precisely, it doesn’t half keep you on your toes. I’m sure that ours was haunted. Often, on one of those days when because of my age (not a student any more and I shall leave More

Big Energy Business

Poor energy saving. It used to be the kid at the back of the classroom. Picked upon, made light of, and more or less invisible. What a life! While energy saving was mocked and bullied for many years, oil and gas sat at the front of the classroom making the teacher’s life hell and taking advantage as much as possible (in this case we’ll call the Earth the teacher…but bear in mind this is only a loose analogy!) But fast More