Get Shorty!

Inspired by the success of Lydia "as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert, as epoch-making as Proust" Davis and hoping to finally hit the literary big time, Frank composes a very, very short story... I was interested to note that the 2013 Man Booker International Prize was awarded to Lydia ... Read More...

Three men in a tub

Rub-a-dub-dub, this week Mr Slang is talking butchers, bakers and candlestick-makers... Rub-a-dub-dub means a pub in rhyming slang, or certainly so in Australia, where it can be abbreviated as rubby or phoneticized as rubbidy. Like a percentage of the type it stems from ascertainable origins, in this case the nursery rhyme ... Read More...

Bottom gear

Hello Ivan, got a new motor? Daniel Kalder finds that the notorious Lada is still selling well in some parts of the world... I first learned about the legendary Soviet Lada car in the mid-‘80s, when the cash-strapped USSR started exporting the notorious rust buckets to capitalist Europe in the hope ... Read More...

Dabbler Diary – Do you know Soapy Gardenshed?

Every morning Amazon helpfully confirms that my phone’s email function still works by trying to sell me something. As does The Ticket Factory. Also Premier Inn, Centre Parks and especially VistaPrint, whose labyrinthine Unsubscribe facility has several times defeated me. These ‘consensual’ marketing emails we are invited to call ‘bacn’, ... Read More...

The Cat Organ

After last week's comparatively gentle report on photographic pigeons, things take a turn towards the macabre with this painful sounding piano A cat organ or cat piano (Katzenklavier in German) is a conjectural musical instrument which consists of a line of cats fixed in place with their tails stretched out underneath ... Read More...

Whatever happened to Aussie plain-speaking?

Dabbler drinks correspondent Henry Jeffreys is disappointed to find that even the Australians have succumbed to wine marketing gibberish... Last year the BBC documentary Chateau Chunder charted the rise of the Australian wine in Britain, and what really shone out of it was the Australian genius for marketing and plain speaking. Now you probably ... Read More...

Tales of Little Ruskin

If Frank was Education Minister he would make the works of John Ruskin absolutely central to the education of our tinies. To this end, he has been hard at work devising Tales Of Little Ruskin, suitable for reading aloud to infants. I. Little Ruskin In The Garden “I was extremely fond of ... Read More...

On Swivel-Eyed Loons

The 'swivel-eyed loons' are back! But have you ever wondered where that fine old description of shire Tories comes from? Allow Mr Slang to enlighten you... My apologies to those who find such things of world-shattering, albeit momentary import, but I am at a loss to see quite where we are ... Read More...