Rush Limbaugh fans beware - Rita gets political again in this dispatch and she's madder 'n hell... I’ve had some female medical problems lately, so I did what any respectable American woman would in these times. I consulted my local congressman. Before seeing my doctor I want to be sure I’m ... Read More...
Month: March 2012
What the Grand Old Man's bizarre reconfiguration of Homer can tell us about our empirically real world. As William Ewart Gladstone recognized from his reading of Homer, much of our mental mapping of the world is fanciful; all of it is provisional. For example, I can recall the brow-furrowing effort I had ... Read More...
Anne Ward is the mastermind behind the remarkable Nothing to See Here blog and now the author of a Nothing to See Here book, subtitled A Guide to the Hidden Joys of Scotland. On this jaunt she takes us down a pair of roads that just don't add up. The B7076/B7078 is literally the ... Read More...
To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, we're serialising The Pickwick Papers... Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, we're exclusively serialising their abridged version of what is perhaps Dickens’ funniest work, The Pickwick Papers, read by Anton Lesser. Chapters 15 and 16 can be heard below. You can catch ... Read More...
Gaw recalls a Welshman who was a self-made hero to some, a self-romanticising show-off to others. Brit's clip of Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood from Lazy Sunday Afternoon the other week sent me looking for more opportunities to hear that voice. Here's a spell-binding excerpt from an interview where he talks about mining. ... Read More...
In the week after Davy Jones' death at the age of 66, Brit pays tribute to the Monkees... So goodbye to David Thomas Jones (30 December 1945 – 29 February 2012), an Englishman who conquered America, archetype of the hairless boyband cutie. Never my favourite Monkee, Davy was one for the ... Read More...
We go to hospital to get well, but does the hospital environment itself affect our wellbeing? In the mid-1980s, I had the dubious pleasure of visiting the Soho Hospital for Women. It was full-on linoleum, with Florence Nightingale style iron bedsteads, surrounded by 1950s floral curtains: A palace of white ceramic ... Read More...
Every month we award a bottle of Glengoyne 10 year old single malt - the finest whisky available to humanity – to a commenter who tickles our fancy… Dabblers are by their very nature nonconformist, and like Heraclitus they also know that there is nothing immutable, except the need for change...Which is why ... Read More...
Over at Hooting Yard, Frank Key has been bashing out a daily essay of roughly 1,000 words since the first of January, addressing diverse subjects including etiquette, jelly and the Screaming Abdabs . In case any Dabbler readers have yet to immerse themselves in this daily bath of wisdom and learning, ... Read More...
'The Pitcher' - Arthur Binstead This week Mr Slang recalls a weekly sporting rag with a strong sideline in the music-halls and tittle-tattle... ‘For Galahad in his day had been a notable lad about town. A beau sabreur of Romano’s, A Pink ‘Un. A Pelican. A crony of Hughie Drummond and Fatty ... Read More...
