The most memorable and piercing end of term report I received at school consisted of this single sentence: “Andrew’s attitude is a not entirely displeasing mixture of cooperation and sedition.” This headstone-worthy epigram was penned by my A-level history teacher, a Mr Berwick Coates, and blow me if I didn’t ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Brit
Part 2 of Brit's look at the influences on Van Morrison features the Godfather of Soul, the King of Rock 'n Soul and some serious sweating... Few artists, as I noted a few months ago, have been more influential than Van Morrison, and few have been as explicit about their own ... 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...
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Then I had my own children and I got them all out again. And jolly good fun they are ... Read More...
This exclusive extract from the Spring 2013 issue of Slightly Foxed quarterly is by Dabbler editor Andrew Nixon, and looks at the dark appeal and extraordinary publication history of J.P. Donleavy's cult novel The Ginger Man... ‘This’, said my father, handing me a battered paperback, ‘is the sort of book that ... Read More...
In every party there comes a critical point when the sober and the pissed have diverged so far that they can no longer communicate with each other. I found myself on the wrong side of the divide at about 10.45pm on Saturday night, staring at the bonfire and sipping a ... 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...
At a quarter past one on Monday afternoon I descended into the crypt. The heavy door closed behind me and I was alone, facing a long pool of water in which the low grey-green ceiling arches were reflected to create an optical illusion of a tubular tunnel. In the middle ... Read More...
Was there really a Golden Age of pop music? Yes, argues Brit. It was circa 1950 (or possibly earlier) to the present day... Three weeks ago Mahlerman asked whether classical music was dead. Interestingly, people ask the same question about pop music with far more frequency and surely much less reason. In ... Read More...
An old university friend once told me of an unusual habit his grandfather (an otherwise outwardly ordinary man) had when sitting down to Sunday lunch. If there was pork crackling in the offing, he would take a decent length of it, recline in his chair with head thrust back and, ... Read More...
