To Enfield, to meet an accountant. And with that impeccably Pooterish opening line I commence what is hoped to be a recurring feature, the Dabbler Diary. I went on the train. Accountants are having a bad press of late – or at least the 'clever accountants' are. Stupid ones are still ... Read More...
Month: June 2012
This week Mahlerman brings us four great, and perhaps surprising, Bohemian composers... If you believe that music can express a national identity, then perhaps the greatest concentration of it in the 19th and 20th Century was in Bohemia and Moravia - today the Czech Republic. Save in his passionate cycle of ... Read More...
It’s a shame the sun fizzled out later in the week, but Tuesday was the perfect day for a spot of fashion scouting at Royal Ascot. I thought I’d share a few photographs of some of the fabulous men’s outfits on show, which I’m sure you’ll wish to emulate for ... Read More...
Jon Hotten reveals cricket's dirty little secret: nobody likes fielding... In a game at the start of the season, we fielded for 47 overs in the bone-deep cold. The distant pavilion glowed like a cottage in the paintings of that old fraud Thomas Kinkade. The grass on the outfield was thick ... Read More...
Only a fool would dismiss the shack chatter of bumpkins, advises Frank... Whenever bumpkins gather of an evening in the shack at the end of the lane, sooner or later their talk will turn to the Huffington Post. It is not uncommon for the peasantry to fixate upon minutiae, of course. ... Read More...
From dark tourism to Dixieland jazz, Jonathon takes us on a trip to the slang's heart of darkness... About ten years ago I went to Auschwitz. This was Auschwitz II, with its iconic ex-Austrian barracks and the that final run of railway tracks, connecting backwards, for this was among the reasons ... Read More...
Daniel Kalder learns there's a trick to successfully doing nothing outdoors... Like many British people, I grew up disconnected from nature. Though my small town was close to forests and woods and water, we pretty much left the animals and plants alone. Specialists, known as “farmers”, were our mediators. Every now ... Read More...
From pubs in trees to childhood dens, Jonathan now concludes his arboreal notes with a treehouse for the old... In my last post, I mused on the fierce comfort that children take from their tree houses and brooded on what these knocked together and wholly gratuitous structures could mean to us, ... Read More...
A treat for you this week, as Rita vividly recalls her epic bus trip from New York to San Francisco, which included witnessing an extraordinary romantic encounter... The kiss was the longest, most passionate I had ever seen outside a movie. The passengers craned their heads above the seats for a ... Read More...
A break in Paris provides Toby Ferris an opportunity to consider how we overcome our everyday exhaustion. Last week I was in Paris, and successfully carried out a minor mission in the Louvre to locate the solitary Bruegel they have hanging there, known as the Mendicants or Beggars. It is a ... Read More...
