The Unholy Trinity Of Bad Internet Lists

MikeachimThe Everyday43 Comments

the list

(After my Twitter rant of last week, I needed a walk on the North York Moors to chill out. This I did. Did it work? Well, I’m now ranting about something else. I think this shows Progress.)

So, you want your post to get lots of page-hits? Want traffic roaring like a scene from Days of Thunder? (Apologies for choice of movie and hyperlink. I’ll try harder next time.) Want people to thumb-up, retweet and generally daub it in all the colors of online approval?

You’ll want a list, then.

This is what is known as Conventional Wisdom – and it’s ruining the Internet.

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Yorkshire Puddings: Britain’s Most Fragile Crop

MikeachimThe Everyday20 Comments

RoastBeef

If you’ve ever sat down to a proper English Sunday roast, you’ll be acquainted with one of Yorkshire‘s greatest cultural gifts to the world, the Yorkshire Pudding. I’ve always loved them – delicious and visually arresting, not to mention a great place to store excess gravy (and hey, who doesn’t want excess gravy?).

But what exactly are they – and why Yorkshire?

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Olympus

MikeachimThe Everyday12 Comments

DCP_2349

I’m leant against the car, gasping, giggling, sucker-punched by the cold. Around me, the landscape is motionless and brittle. The tops of trees have exploded as the wind tried to bend them.  Overhead, dirty clouds boil past like timelapse photography. The rock-strewn ground is so hard you expect it to ring. Take the trees and ice-rimed telephone lines away, and you’re left with the surface of Mars.

I’m on the same latitude as Algeria and Morocco, and the temperature is 15 below freezing.

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Breaking The Ice With Strangers: Hook

MikeachimThe Everyday27 Comments

LiverpoolSt

Breaking the ice with strangers as you travel.

The road is a lonely place.

Everyone’s a stranger. You long to connect with someone, anyone, but the odds are stacked against you. You’re in too much of a hurry to engage in social bonding rituals like feasting and hanging out. There’s the natural coolness in the air. And hey, you’re not your normal self right now – flung outside your comfort zone, living on your nerves and at the mercy of thoughts and whims born of sleep deprivation, addled body chemistry and sensory overload. Capping all that – you’re the outsider, with everything to prove.

The common reaction (if you’re like me) is to give up. To hide yourself away. Stiff upper lip, a sledgehammer air of authority you don’t feel and the kind of fixed expression you normally only see on Terminators and the acutely constipated. Lonely traveller, coming through.

But there are ways to improve your chances – and some of those vulnerabilities weighing heavy on your confidence are just the tools you need to make new friends.

Here’s how I reckon it works.

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