This week Mr Slang discusses family values... I have noticed, may I assume that I am not alone, a new linguistic abomination that must now be listed among the many repellent inventions that have come with the Olympics. For this neologism we can presumably thank the PR company that coined the ... Read More...
Month: May 2012
It's lovely giveaway time again, and that means we've got a teetering pile of 12 copies of a rather popular new book to give away to members of our Dabbler Book Club and our esteemed, yet highly secretive League of Dabblers... Unless you've been living in a cave it's unlikely that ... Read More...
On the next stage of his meandering journey, Jonathan Law discovers some unlikely treehouses... If there’s anything more hobbit-like than a tree inside a pub, I suppose it would have to be a pub inside a tree. The Big Baobab [above] is a pub in the hollow trunk of a 72-foot ... Read More...
Batten down the hatches, its American politics again. Rita doesn't think much of the 'Citizens United' decision... Greetings my fellow American Persons! My name is Behemoth Inc. and I am thrilled to celebrate my newly minted power of speech with you today. First I must confess that I come from a ... Read More...
Norbiton may have found its perfect twin town - the city of Paterson, NJ. But how to describe it? I have been reading Paterson by William Carlos Williams, and in consequence stand accused in the assizes of my own head of writing only (in Ezra Pound’s phrase, referring to the sort ... Read More...
Becky Milligan, Radio 4 reporter, returns - and she's been smitten by a tall, pale stranger. A small adjustment can often solve a much bigger problem and bring in much joy. But the catch is that often you have no clue what this small adjustment is, until you have done the ... Read More...
To mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, we've been serialising The Pickwick Papers. This is the final part of the serialisation. From next week we'll have another treat for our readers... Thanks to our friends at Naxos Audiobooks, we've been exclusively serialising their abridged version of what is perhaps ... Read More...
Today sees the return of our occasional series featuring some of the finest pictures in London's National Gallery, as Nige admires a vast procession... Norbiton Toby's reflections on processions brought to mind a National Treasure that has so far escaped the attention of Dabblers - Frederic Lord Leighton's Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna Carried in ... Read More...
After last night's Europop shenanigans, Mahler presents The Dabbler's Alternative Eurovision Song Contest, as it might have looked 100 years ago... With live animals banned from the Eurodreck last night it was unlikely that Pudsey, the adorable lovechild of a bichon-frise and a border collie's one-night stand, would rock-up to entrance ... Read More...
The temperature in London rose dramatically on Tuesday, and not simply because the Chelsea Flower Show was such a hot ticket. Walking through the teeming crowds became quite an ordeal in the heat. Despite the ongoing hosepipe ban, nannying announcements were made regularly over the tannoy to remind visitors to ... Read More...