Jonathon is amongst the dreaming spires this week, as he considers Oxfordian slang... I was in Oxford yesterday. Waiting for my train home I noticed that the marketing boys and girls have been in and that the old place is now labelled the city of ‘learning and culture’ which is I ... Read More...
Month: February 2013
Rita discovers the Platonic Ideal of an American painting... “You want to see modern art? Here” said my cousin, opening the door to his garage with a flourish and gesturing towards metal shelves stacked with the usual detritus of utility rooms the world over. We were in Ghent, Belgium, home to ... Read More...
Solo Twister, fried chicken and good old heterosexual tactility in Susan's diary this week... ‘Rebecca – 3 miles away’ keeps popping up on my computer screen, looking for a date - I’m just trying to work out why. I understand that men have occasionally been known to feel attracted to women. ... Read More...
Exclusively for The Dabbler, writer Karen Campbell takes us on a trip on Glasgow's unique underground railway... Getting around Glasgow – Scotland’s biggest city – can be a delight on sunny days, as you stroll by the city’s seventy-odd parks, glittering shops and sandstone boulevards; it can be an assault course ... Read More...
Are rock side-projects always self-indulgent rubbish? Not necessarily, says Daniel Kalder, who can think of four non-rotten ones... Ah, the rock n’ roll side project: in any long career it’s difficult for a rock star to resist the temptation to indulge. Weary of their official identities, worn out by fan expectations, ... Read More...
These days with our lightening fast internet connections it's easy to forget how people were always thinking of ways to shift their envelopes around the place that little bit faster, and what could be faster than blasting it into orbit in an enormous rocket? Rocket mail has been attempted by various ... Read More...
February and it's still raining. It’s raining, it’s pouring, The old man is snoring, He went to bed and bumped his head And couldn’t get up in the morning. As someone said, my favourite rhyme about a lonely old person dying in their bed in a storm. Like much else in the nursery repertoire, a ... Read More...
Frank reveals the true story behind the origins of the Osmonds' (horse)meatiest song... Those of us old enough to recall the days when the Osmonds were titans of pop have probably blocked from our memories most of the mawkish drivel with which they assaulted the charts. One song, however, remains indelibly ... Read More...
Jonathon reviews Terence Blacker's new novel - and contemplates the role of rats in fiction... These are the primary stereotypes with which slang burdens the rat. All are negative, none may be observed in the actual animal. They are, as should be apparent, the characteristics of human beings. Those, in every ... Read More...
Richard Briers died on Monday. By way of a tribute, here is a repeat of Jon Hotten's post about an episode of Ever Decreasing Circles and its "quiet, unacknowledged and deep-running despair", which features, naturally enough, a game of cricket... You might remember Ever Decreasing Circles, a British - make that ... Read More...