The snow is falling in Paris and Jonathon's thoughts turn to cocaine and laundry-theft... The snow has reached Paris and up by the fountain round which the office workers parade their flat-imprisoned chiens morning and night Fifi’s owner is wielding her caninette for which I thank her since the white may ... Read More...
Month: January 2013
This month all members of the Dabbler Book Club are in with a chance of winning a copy of The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam, who was described by The Times as 'a master of words and arresting images'. The Blind Man's Garden was chosen recently by the Guardian as one of the highlights ... Read More...
Cryptic crosswords are too easy, aren't they? What we need is something that somehow combines cryptic clues, anagrams and lateral thinking in a sort of mega-puzzle... Thankfully, that's exactly what quiz-master Brit the Elder has created... How to solve the 'Fiddle and Find' quiz: (1) Solve the cryptic clue (2) Apply ... Read More...
Susan sees signs of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius... According to astrologer Shelley von Strunckel, 2013 will be a ‘year of hope’ – though not necessarily for men. Women are becoming more powerful, and this year will be a ‘tipping point’ in our bid for supremacy. It’s not just ... Read More...
Clutching our yellow balloons we sidled through the crowd into the windy car park. There was an excellent turnout for the nursery’s 10th ‘birthday party’. The balloons were being handed out by Natalie, the manager, while her number two Melissa filled ever more from a vast helium cylinder and in ... Read More...
Mahlerman gives us a tour d'horizon of the serious music scene in 2013, and he pulls no punches... Or is it just dying, very slowly, and the priest is on the way? Writing this in the shadow of the closure, after more than 90 years, of the HMV music chain (following ... Read More...
This week my delve into the weirder side of Wikipedia brought up the story of Jack Churchill - a fearlessly eccentric British warrior. Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming "Jack" Churchill, DSO, MC & Bar (1906 – 1996), nicknamed Fighting Jack Churchill and Mad Jack Churchill, was a British soldier who ... Read More...
The second remarkable thing you noticed about him – a middle-aged Indian gentleman, stout but trim, and wearing a silk tunic in traditional paisley pattern – was the preternatural sense of calm he exuded. One sensed a feeling of deep peace within him, a resigned acceptance of life and its ... Read More...
Over at Hooting Yard, Frank Key has been devoting the year thus far to diary entries by the great, the not so great, and the frankly fictional. Here, exclusively for The Dabbler, he has unearthed the diary of a nonagenarian Russian exile in Spain, written on this day in 1994: It ... Read More...
Jonathon starts a new series featuring all the colours of slang by looking at cowardy-cowardy custards, jealous husbands and the yellow peril... A new year, or still thereabouts, so why not a new thread: colour. Rainbow nation slang is not – violets being simply onions or cabbage and indigo briefly plays on ... Read More...
