This week Susan witnesses some top-class profanity at the West End's hottest new musical... If my father were still alive, he would certainly have walked out after only a few minutes. After all, he banned me from watching Till Death Us Do Part and Steptoe and Son because of the swearing. Despite ... Read More...
Month: March 2013
Reggie is a London-based lawyer who blogs here, here, here and, actually, elsewhere. It's quite difficult to introduce him as he has such a wide (and erudite) set of interests. Anyhow, we're delighted to welcome today a meaty post on one of the oldest preoccupations of the learned, provoked by ... Read More...
A treat for you today as commenter and friend of The Dabbler John Halliwell brings you music inspired by the rhythm of the trains... As a child I developed an almost fanatical love of the steam engine; I doubt Betjeman felt that love any more intensely. Winter was a favourite time: ... Read More...
Time was when my idea of a decent American film seemed to involve someone like Nicholas Cage (back when he was human) gunning a beat-up Dodge Charger into the Californian desert before having a strange dreamy pre-dawn sequence involving some hollow concrete dinosaurs in a parking lot. Sadly we don't ... Read More...
A treat today: the complete musical history of Frank Key... The other day I had a persistent earworm in the form of the Skye Boat Song. “Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing…” I have to say this was a more welcome noise in my head than the usual ... Read More...
... and also bunyips, whangdoodles and snollygosters - it's Mr Slang's guide to monsters... The usual taxonomy of slang is derived from searching themes and is, like much else, dependant on what one did at some earlier, quite possibly ill-worked out and at all too premature a stage. The childhood, as ... Read More...
Jonathan Law returns to The Dabbler with the first in an occasional series looking at people who chose to disappear... Here he tells the remarkable tale of folk singer Shelagh McDonald... Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand, As epitaph: He chucked up everything And just cleared off, And always the voice will sound Certain you approve This audacious, purifying, Elemental ... Read More...
Susan makes an error of judgement and finds herself in Westfield... If I had a pound for every time I’ve clipped my alloy wheels on a badly designed car park entrance/exit, I’d be a wealthy woman by now. The other time this seems to happen is when my mother is in ... Read More...
A difference between me and a craftsman is in the level of violent aggression with which I approach manual tasks – this I have noticed about myself. Take screwing. A craftsman would with patience and care twiddle his bradawl and drive in his screws at a steady, sensible pace, whereas ... Read More...
This week, Mahlerman takes us back the 16th and 17th centuries and the sound of the Baroque... When the Renaissance Period in music, which began in the early 1400's, rolled over into the Baroque two hundred years later, the difference between what a composer wrote down, and what a performer played, ... Read More...
