Marking both last week's referendum result and the centenary of the Great War, here Gaw presents a poem about the war effort of the London Scottish rugby club... It's always the fellowship that seems most important to soldiers; ultimately, it's what persuades them to die. Doesn't that fit the definition of ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Bill
How far can you travel on a sofa? I’ve been working on and off for a number of years in the world of sofas, God forgive me. So I was surprised I hadn’t heard of the “sofa poem by Seamus Heaney” that a colleague referred to the other day. She was ... Read More...
Crumbling châteaux and closet gay Counts - here's Gaw's terrific tale of some strange lodgings he took whilst playing rugby in South-West France.... Being a professional sportsman isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's actually very boring. Training isn't mentally stimulating and professional sportsmen tend not to be that interesting; ... Read More...
We enjoy a strange book, an imaginative, weird and uncategorisable exploration of the East London marshes... “What is this book?” you might ask on finishing it. Entertaining, enlightening and a fluent read, certainly. But as a whole it doesn’t fit any genre: ghost stories are mingled with memoir, local history with ... Read More...
Dabbler editor Gaw explains his role in the popularisation of one of Britain's finest dishes, the Balti... Accompanied by a family-nan, there is surely no more restorative, tasty and cheap meal to be found anywhere than a Balti. It means 'bucket' in Hindi, and was invented in Birmingham. I gather it's ... Read More...
Today we mark the death last weekend of a great Antipodean, Professor Kenneth Minogue - a provocative thinker whose critique of contemporary society should be better known. Funny how it’s the old Tories who have provided the most persuasive and nuanced critique of our recent and ongoing economic disasters. It's because, ... Read More...
Some of the most memorable films live on in our affections not just because they're beautifully shot or well acted or superbly scripted. Sometimes what really makes them stick in our memory is a song... The right sort of song - presented in the right way, in the right place, and ... Read More...
Today we start a new occasional series on shopping, shops and shopkeeping. I have unreasonably sentimental feelings about ironmongery. Or at least I thought they were unreasonable. As kids in South Wales my brother and I used to collect small, pearl-handled penknives, the sort you might use to scrape out a pipe ... Read More...
Baroness Thatcher was inarguably a towering figure of the 20th Century and her legacy will be debated fiercely elsewhere on the internet. But here on the Dabbler, we just want to pay tribute to her radioactive allure... I never thought I’d say this - let alone write it down somewhere public ... Read More...
February and it's still raining. It’s raining, it’s pouring, The old man is snoring, He went to bed and bumped his head And couldn’t get up in the morning. As someone said, my favourite rhyme about a lonely old person dying in their bed in a storm. Like much else in the nursery repertoire, a ... Read More...
