This week Mr Slang tries to penetrate the world of 'edgy'... Edge. Perfectly respectable word. From Old English ęcg. Means edge, point or corner. There it is in Beowulf. The corner sense has vanished (still exists in German ecke) but the rest march on. On edge: tetchy, nervous. Thence edgy. Kipling ... Read More...
Month: January 2012
Gwyn Headley visits a magnificent folly 'built by the ghost of Sir Christopher Wren', where he was once marooned as an infant by his wicked siblings... Hampshire’s finest folly — the biggest, the most impressive, the oddest — is unquestionably Peterson’s tower at Sway. Andrew Thomas Turton Peterson was born in ... Read More...
We've decided to start 2012's Dabbler Book Club off with a bang - This month we're offering members the chance to get their hands on one of the most incendiary literary hits of the last year - The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, The Sisters ... Read More...
Dabblers rejoice! The great Jonathan Meades returns to our screens tonight, with a new series Jonathan Meades on France (BBC Four), in which he "scrutinises the 95 per cent of France that Brits drive through and don't notice en route to the 5 per cent that conforms to their expectation." In ... Read More...
The Atlas of Norbiton is a weekly bulletin from Norbiton: Ideal City of the Failed Life. Unlike its more comprehensive, detailed and discursive mother site, the Anatomy of Norbiton - hailed by Nige as "a thing of strange beauty and wonder, inspired by the South London nowhere known as Norbiton" - the Atlas is ... Read More...
Planning on hosting or attending or a wine tasting? For goodness' sake don't even think about it without first reading Henry's golden rules... I have for some time been planning on starting a wine club so that I can drink wine I wouldn’t normally be able to afford. This club, will be in ... Read More...
Continuing his English seaside/contemplation of brief mortality in a godless universe theme, Brit introduces a children's nonsense poem with even more existential melancholy than Arnold's Dover Beach... Mervyn Peake’s book Rhymes Without Reason is the cultural item that has influenced me more than any other. I must have been about six or ... Read More...
Jon Hotten looks back at one of cricket's most unusual, and possibly slightly grotesque, games... There are several candidates for the match of the year 2011 - mad collapses, last-ball draws, you know, the usual - but there can be only one winner of the award for the year of 1848, ... Read More...
We may be heading for economic meltdown, but music, as ever, has the power to console. Here are four songs about being skint... The theme is obvious enough as we head into 2012 amidst economic predictions that range from miserable to apocalyptic, but while compiling a list of songs about being ... Read More...
The Ford Edsel was launched on ‘E’ Day, the 4th September, 1957. It was so big, it had its own television special on October 13th, called The Edsel Show, featuring Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney and Louis Armstrong. Research and development had gone into overdrive to create the Edsel; ... Read More...
