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Hi - Welcome to Peacockshock. My house on the internet. I'm Ian Peacock

I live in Hertford - a quaint but cool town just north of London England. I'm a media person. I run a consultancy, present radio programmes, do a bit of television and write too. I'm mad about animals and live with my eccentric but fabulous cat Bollinger. I go to the gym, swim a lot, and listen to music non-stop. My family mostly live up north, but also in Denmark and the USA. And I've lived in Newcastle, Durham, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Cambridge, Oxford and London.

So...don't dither on the doorstep. Come in and have a wander round. You can either just scroll down this page and see what takes your fancy. Or you can mouse around the house and click on the different rooms and areas. And keep coming back for new stuff.

Enjoy your stay.

Ian

£19.99

Well, no sooner had I blogged about the £10.66 episode in Waitrose than I found myself in Tesco, having to pay £19.99 precisely. (See evidence below. Yes - I do buy lots of batteries and cat treats. I work in the media and I have a cat.)

'That'll be £19.99,' said the yoof.

And I almost did it. Almost quipped, 'Let's party like it's ... as Prince said.'

But thankfully I stopped myself in the nick of time, realising that Prince's 1999 single was released in 1982, well before the yoof was born. And young people know nothing whatsoever about what happened before they were ten.

I escaped without being sectioned. Two close scrapes in one week.

At this rate, I'll have to pay £18.12 in M&S tomorrow and have to force myself not to mention Tchaikovsky.

Posted by Ian at February 4, 2012 07:52 PM

Posted by Ian at February 4, 2012 07:42 PM

The Blue Tit of St Agnes

It's cold and frosty this morning. I was cheered up by seeing a Blue Tit in the olive tree when I opened the curtains. But, apart from that, it's pretty Siberian out there. This weather reminds me of the opening lines of The Eve of St Agnes, which Keats wrote at this time of year ...

St Agnes' Eve - Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold…

Posted by Ian at February 4, 2012 08:55 AM

The Cookie Monster Does Tom Waits

Tom Waits

Loving this brilliantly edited mash-up of the Cookie Monster covering God's Away On Business Imagine all the footage they had to plough through...

Posted by Ian at February 3, 2012 08:20 AM

£10.66 And All That

That's it. I'm never making smalltalk with a shop assistant again.

I was in a supermarket today, and the cashier gave me my change from a £20 note, saying - 'There you go - £10.66.'

'Ah. The Norman Conquest', I replied.

He gave me an odd look, as if he couldn't decide whether to call security or the police or Hertfordshire mental health services. For a split second, I considered explaining myself. But I thought better of it and headed for the door, feeling embarrassed at knowing something which everyone used to know.

Posted by Ian at February 2, 2012 08:27 PM

Tokyo Cat Café

I seriously want to visit this amazing Cat Café in Tokyo

Posted by Ian at February 1, 2012 08:04 PM

Posted by Ian at February 1, 2012 08:03 PM

Posted by Ian at February 1, 2012 08:02 PM

Six Degrees

I watched the excellent Julie and Julia on DVD today and suddenly realised I have an impressively direct Julia Child namedrop. Here it is -

I once had coffee with friends (well, friends of the parents of a friend) in Cambridge Massachusetts, whose garden backed onto the house where Julia Child lived and filmed her TV programmes. This was in the 1980s, so Julia may have even been in residence. I didn't see her though.

Julia Child - how to make croissants

Posted by Ian at January 29, 2012 11:23 PM

Sign Of The Times - Fore Street Hertford

Nice of them to keep us informed.

Posted by Ian at January 24, 2012 07:17 PM

Eskimo Kitty Kiss

Boll favours the traditional Inuit style of greeting. But, as you can see, she occasionally gets a bit carried away and licks my nose.

Posted by Ian at January 24, 2012 09:08 AM

You Say Pirrats, I Say Pirates - Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

A presenter on Sky News just pronounced 'piracy' as 'pirracy' ('i' as in 'it'). How odd.

Perhaps he was thinking of the correct British pronunciation of 'privacy' ('i' as in 'it' rather than 'i' as in 'eye').

Of course, it's not always that way round. In the UK, we say 'missile' with the second 'i' pronounced like 'eye'. Whereas the Americans say 'missile' as in a 'missal' in church or a 'mistle thrush'.

And then there's 'fertile'. We pronounce the second syllable as 'tile' of course. But they say 'furtle'. So a fertile turtle would be a 'furtle turtle'. How ridiculous. How wrong. Sorry American friends. But it's preposterous and you must stop it now.

Posted by Ian at January 23, 2012 07:41 PM

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