It's the last Dabbler Diary of 2015, and Brit has been to EuroDisney!... For me, Mickey Mouse is a strangely unempathetic character. His blank grin offers no cheer, his squeaky utterances are pitched at a frequency I cannot receive. Goofy I like. Also Donald Duck, though I wouldn’t want to be stuck ... Read More...
Dabbler Diary
The past few weeks and months I've been up and down and over and out. I've been used, abused and frequently confused. I've also been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. It is for those reasons that in lieu of a proper diary ... Read More...
I’m always amazed that some people are content to live in places other than Bristol. Eejits. My dear friend Martin, for instance, has to come all the way from Cardiff (a poor imitation of Bristol with added delusions of Welsh grandeur, of all things) to get a decent night out ... Read More...
My favourite Australian - the competition is not stiff - is Michael ‘Maxy’ Klinger. Michael Klinger is a softly-spoken, slender, crooked man with austerely cropped grey hair and the permanent wrinkled grin that pale-skinned Antipodeans have evolved to cope with the sun. He makes a living by carefully, repetitively striking ... Read More...
We could all write screeds on why left of labour groupings have not managed to expand even as people were angry about the status quo but the truth is that none of them have ever been able to bring together the enthusiasm and direction that Corbyn has managed. Michael Rosen - ... Read More...
Hugh Laurie once wrote of his teenage self: “I somehow contrived to pull off the gruesome trick of being both fat and thin at the same time”. This summer has managed to be similarly perverse, being first disgustingly hot then offensively cold and wet. Why do we British even pretend ... Read More...
It has been heartening to see the emergence of Nick Kyrgios at Wimbledon. Ever since the golden era of McEnroe and Connors, men’s tennis has been rather lacking in jerks. Krygios is a proper, no-bones-about-it jerk - but even better is that I can add him to my cherished list of ... Read More...
I don’t know if you’re the same, but whenever I watch coverage of the Glastonbury Festival on the BBC and see the sheer scale of Michael Eavis’ achievement - the array of great music and performers, the creativity, the tradition, the vibe, the extraordinary range and diversity of people all ... Read More...
I have, at last, discovered the secret of happiness. You abolish Tuesday. I have written about Tuesday before, elsewhere, and noted that it and I have had many meetings and no good has ever come of them. We go way back, to school. Term always began on a Tuesday and it ... Read More...
‘I hate Cleopatra!’ says the precocious student and mathematical genius Thomasina Coverly in the play Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. She goes on to explain: The Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, ... Read More...