Down in the country this weekend where I had a read of the local paper, The Wilts and Glos Standard. This is what appeared in last week’s '100 Years Ago' feature: Saturday October 26th 1912 Effigy burning. On Thursday of last week some of the villagers of Siddington, among whom was a ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Bill
The BBC's Savile-Newsnight dégringolade, as horrible as it is, offers up an interesting case study to students of management. Is there a symptom of bureaucratic degradation that the corporation is not exhibiting? We have: the proliferation of managers but a lack of management; the presence of people whose job title begins ... Read More...
More anti-catastrophist news: teenage delinquency is plummetting. Adolescents are increasingly turning their noses up at drugs, booze and fags, with consumption by young people the lowest at almost any time since we started measuring these things. Whilst this supports my view that things are really quite ok at the moment, it also helps ... Read More...
Susan’s post last Saturday, about a new form of space-maximising home, got me thinking about what we could do to improve things without re-modelling the entire place. Here are a few suggestions. First, double up on dishwashers and dispense entirely with cupboards for your crockery and pots and pans. Rotate it ... Read More...
To ‘s-Hertogenbosch. Tricky, isn’t it? But it becomes a lot easier when you know the locals shorten it to Den Bosch, pronounced ‘boss’ (‘The Duke’s Wood’ to ‘The Wood’). It’s from this nickname that its most famous son, the painter Hieronymus, took his surname. English speakers are fortunate he didn’t ... Read More...
I went to a couple of conferences last week, both, as it happens, on the future. One was concerned with retail and the consumer, the other on the web, technology and design. Most speakers saw the future as consisting of a lot more of what’s new-ish today. So the internet would ... Read More...
Nige’s book review the other day reminded me of an anecdote from Gerhardie’s childhood, recounted in his Memoirs of a Polyglot: My father, conceiving the idea that, in proportion to the collapse of his body, his mind had developed to the highest degree of mental acuteness, declared one day that he ... Read More...
Provence, and as the lady said, "I've talked enough about me. Now, let's talk about you - what do you think about me?" So what do they think of London 2012 down here? Shortly after our arrival we overheard the owner of a bar jovially haranguing a large, pinkish Brit: you ... Read More...
Our recent celebration of Modness reminded us where we found the title of this feature. Here's a chance to read the first ever Lazy Sunday Afternoon - and to note how much better it is nowadays! Lazy Sunday Afternoon is going to be a weekly feature here at The Dabbler: a ... Read More...
To the Olympic Park. All those good things you’ve heard about the games? I'm afraid they're all entirely true. My one disappointment was that the New Zealand women's hockey team didn't do the haka. But you can't really blame that on London 2012. *** I suppose the only thing that I really ... Read More...
