In a special guest post, Canadian commenter Peter muses on the English-speaking world's various attitudes to booze... The British and Americans have more in common than language to divide them. The joys of intercontinental blogging and a long time bedtime addiction to police mysteries have led me to understand that a ... Read More...
America
Here's what Frank's been up to in New York... I was in New York last week, so I took the opportunity to pay homage to Elizabeth Smart by sitting down by Grand Central Station and weeping. This is easier said than done, for 42nd Street, on to which the great railway ... Read More...
Time was when my idea of a decent American film seemed to involve someone like Nicholas Cage (back when he was human) gunning a beat-up Dodge Charger into the Californian desert before having a strange dreamy pre-dawn sequence involving some hollow concrete dinosaurs in a parking lot. Sadly we don't ... Read More...
Rita weighs into the gun debate, and finds an unlikely hero in Piers Morgan... Well, I’m going to bite the bullet and write about guns, a topic that leaves me feeling trapped in a Hall of Mirrors where everywhere you turn you see a distorted, nightmarish vision of America. But this ... Read More...
Posh British soap Downton Abbey is a worldwide television phenomenon, but could the introduction of the 'vulgar' American character Martha kill the US's love affair with the show...? As dawn broke over Washington D.C. on Monday January 7th area residents were divided into two camps. No, not Democrats and Republicans this time, ... Read More...
Exiled in the US, Rita attempts to import an English Christmas... We don’t have Boxing Day in America, but it’s probably just a matter of time before we adopt it as we have so many other English Christmas customs over the years I’ve lived here. Christmas was a rather sad time ... Read More...
Freud is credited with being the first to state what now seems so obvious: gun = penis. Especially if the animate appendage is in some way inadequate... This is my rifle, this is my gun. One is for fighting, one is for fun. US Military Parade-ground chant (trad.) Slang lacks the empathy gene. And ... Read More...
If it weren't for a proper, old fashioned newspaper, I would not have discovered an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, and would never have visited the extraordinary property that has recently been named one of 31 national treasures by the USA’s National Trust for Historic Preservation. Located at 2007 Franklin Street, Haas Lilienthal ... Read More...
A tale of ancient bones and living relics - Rita goes fossil-hunting in Maryland and finds a dinosaur of 1950s glamour... Thanksgiving was a busy time chez Tull as members of the far-flung Byrne clan flew in from London and San Francisco. We gave thanks for the end of the political ... Read More...
Frank experiences Maryland culture at a transatlantic Dabbler summit - and then teaches the Americans a thing or two about British culture... I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. But instead of being the claws, I was staring at them, piled high ... Read More...
