I'd never heard of this oddity before but I wonder, do any Dabblers remember this whimsical shaggy dog story that appeared in The Guardian way back in 1977? And do you know anyone who was taken in by it? San Serriffe is a fictional island nation created by the Guardian newspaper ... Read More...
Month: April 2013
Dabbler Book Club - April Book of the Month Turned Out Nice Again by Richard Mabey In his trademark style, Richard Mabey's Turned Out Nice Again weaves together science, art and memoirs (including his own) to show the weather's impact on our culture and national psyche. He rambles through the myths of Golden Summers and our ... Read More...
First we had Google Earth, now Islamic Earth. What other Earths might we look forward to, wonders Frank... We are doing our best to launch the Islamic Google Earth in the next four months... We are developing this service with the Islamic views we have in Iran and we will put ... Read More...
Mr Slang has a new toy, and he intends to play with it... I have a new toy. Given that my imminent birthday (Saturday) will bring me a scant five years from the Biblical prescription, this worries me. The idea, that is, of a toy. Or, were I not still wondering ... Read More...
In honour of World Malbec Day today, our wine guru Henry Jeffreys has been pondering Anglo-Argentine relations... I think any animosity from the Argies towards us British can be explained because they feel rejected by us. No country outside the Empire was as pro-British as Argentina. You only have to look at ... Read More...
Sunday Times journalist (and occasional Dabbler) Bryan Appleyard has a new novel out, exclusively as an eBook. Nige enjoys the tale of the 'mad, enchanted dream suburb' of Bedford Park... First, of course, I must declare an interest: Appleyard and I go way back - two score years and more, man ... Read More...
This week our intrepid style guru gets scrubbed, pummelled, prodded and poked on a trip to the countryside... Where were you on the day Margaret Thatcher died? It may turn out to be one of those occasions you will never forget – like JFK’s assassination, the death of Princess Diana, 9/11 ... Read More...
The Health Visitor (why do these public sector job titles always seem like Orwellian euphemisms for something sinister?) knocked on the door. She had come to assess my eldest daughter (Brit Jnr, but hereafter in this Diary known as ‘C’) for her hearing and speech development. I opened up and ... Read More...
This week Mahlerman introduces some of the great music that emerged from the chaos of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia... Few will argue that the 19th Century became a Golden Age for Russian Literature, and similarly it was not until around the 1860's, after the death of the so-called father of ... Read More...
Here we are with our smart phones and our ipads looking all cool on the internet, when all along we could have been connecting via a snail-based social media... The pasilalinic-sympathetic compass, also referred to as the snail telegraph, was a contraption built in an attempt to prove the misguided hypothesis ... Read More...
