Dabbler Diary – For the birds

Saturday was Owl Day at the Speedwell Children’s Centre so we took the girls along. Bob the owl man looked like an owl. That sort of thing happens far too often to ascribe it all to coincidence, doesn’t it? Ken Livingstone looks like a newt. Same with aptronyms. Strong and ... Read More...

John Murray Spear & the Electric Messiah

There's something cyborg about these early explorers of the meld between man and machine, all part of this week's weird wikipedia article... John Murray Spear (September 16, 1804 – October 5, 1887) was an American Spiritualist clergyman who is most notable for his attempts to construct an electrically powered Messiah which ... Read More...

Nisbet Spotting

Speak, memory! Frank reminisces about his own juvenilia... When I was about eleven years old, I devoted much of my time to nisbet spotting. For a child growing up on a featureless suburban council estate, it was perhaps an unusual pastime, and more unusual still that, so young, I was the ... Read More...

Empire of Booze

Why did port and sherry conquer the world while equally good French equivalents remain local obscurities? Because the British Empire globalised booze, argues Henry in his forthcoming book... Perhaps my favourite part of France is the Roussillon, the area closest physically and culturally to Spain. My wife calls it Sprance. I ... Read More...

Cub Scout badges: The dark side

Revealed: the shocking truth about the less well-known Cub Scout badges... When I was eight, a great-uncle offered me the princely sum of 50p to join the local Cub Scouts. I'd never had that much money before and was sorely tempted, but I couldn't bear the idea of having to wear ... Read More...

When March blows

In today's Dabbler Verse feature, two poems about hanging out the washing... Ivor Gurney was extremely sensitive to changes in the world around him, be it the weather or the seasons. Of course, one could argue that any "nature poet" (e.g., Edward Thomas, Andrew Young, John Clare, William Wordsworth) necessarily possesses ... Read More...