While researching a potential story for a client, I found, scattered across the internet, a whole subgenre of lists of archaic bylaws that are still current. In typical internet fashion, many of the lists simply […]
Sketches of Little Britain
A few recent scribbles.
America
I’ve been a Paul Simon fan for more than 40 years. My parents owned Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. It was one of the I’d-inevitably-know-inside-out standards that my dad would play on the weekends, along with […]
I’ve found a buried chest
The term “cliffhanger” is considered to have originated with the serialised version of Thomas Hardy’s A Pair of Blue Eyes, published serially in Tinsley’s Magazine in 1873. At the end of one instalment, Henry Knight, one of […]
Storytelling
Everything turns. I’ve spent too long lately staring at a blank sheet of paper. I was never a great student. I was, as one of my lecturers put it, “the type of scholar who, when entranced […]
Line by line
I’ve been teaching myself to draw. It’s a long time since I’ve picked up a pencil for any meaningful length of time and I’m loving it. The results are patchy, but there’s a great deal […]
RIP Clive James
I first read Clive James, in barren suburban Australia, pre-teen, early seventies, when my dad would bring home piles of old copies of The Observer from the office. He’d bring them home to evoke homesickness, but […]
“I, in my great and unmatched wisdom…”
Trump’s latest eternal quote, destined for thirty ‘how not to’ textbooks, and a brilliant Brian Bilston poem by lunchtime, lays bare his Achilles heel. Before the political dark ages, a pre-Christmas episode of Question Time […]
One share is enough
Compliance, adherence and acquiescence are beefy words often used in relation to rules. Built into each of those words is a sense of resistance and belligerence – as if those rules, ideally, should be more […]
Dissent’s volume knob
Back in antediluvian times (before the ‘social’ flood), small arguments and disputes felt different. It often started with ‘I’m not sure that’s a great idea’. The person had to feel fairly sure of him or […]