There was once a very popular chain in the UK famous for its Pick and Mix sweet/candy selection. Whether if was famed around the world for it—it wasn’t in origin a UK company—I don’t know. What I do know: this is one of the pest control stories that people hate hearing most.
I’d been paged a message to get a particular branch with bells on. Continue reading
A recent conversation about what can be donated to homeless charities prompted the memory that inspired this list of terrible smells.
The current resistance to masks found abundantly everywhere isn’t the first time I’ve encountered refusal to wear them. Only last time the masks Continue reading
The story of how I found out one of the U.K.’s greatest recording studio’s best kept secrets; something any music tourist would probably prefer not know. Continue reading
Recently I’ve been thinking of writing something about how certain songs can take me to a very specific time and place.
Last week I was lucky enough to see Continue reading
Madge, me and the Brixton Academy; the latest entry in the Diary of a Mad Pest Controller.
Continue reading
“I could be a writer with a growing reputation; I could be the ticket man at Fulham Broadway Station. What a waste . . . What a waste.”
I used to walk past that ticket man made famous by Ian Dury’s lyrics on regular occasion. Going to and from Chelsea matches at Stamford Bridge. It was always a man, as I remember. Not that I paid too much attention.
Except for one particular game against Continue reading
Recently the BBC reported an elderly woman had to be rescued from a burning mobile home after it had been set on fire by blow torches being used to remove spiders from its underside.
A bit excessive, perhaps?
I once worked in pest control. While people calling us out and paying through the nose to have a casual spider removed was pretty much unheard of, they were something in our text book of how-to-deal-withs. Continue reading
N. P. Ryan 