About me

I used to be an academic linguist, so I write about language for the Guardian sometimes, including this on portmanteau words like phablet and fauxhawk, this daft French vocabulary quiz based on phrases from the TV drama Spiral, and this on the art of subtitling foreign-language TV dramas.

I also write about cycling. For this piece in BikeRadar, I talked to that rare breed, women who work in bike shops. My alter ego, Training Tsarina, dispensed dubious advice in now-sadly-no-more Women’s Cycling magazine. I also wrote cycling horoscopes and the odd article for Women’s Cycling, and I wrote a cyclocross diary for Total Women’s Cycling. I blog on all things bike for Victor & Liberty, too.

Rowdy enthusiasm about opera and barbershop singing can be found on my blog.