Some sound advice for our younger readers today, as Steerforth discovers a 1950s sex guide for boys... Not long ago I found a very instructive book called On Becoming a Man - A Book for Teen-Age Boys by Harold Shryock, M.A., M.D., a teacher at the University of Loma Linda in California. Published in ... Read More...
Life
Why is it so hard to turn around on the street without indulging in some meaningless ham acting? Here at last is Brit's complete Beginner's Guide to the phenomenon known as Pavement Panto™... Well, he couldn't keep walking north forever. At the next corner he stopped, looked indecisive, then patted himself all ... Read More...
Following his pieces about publisher's sales reps and his first year working in Waterstones, Steerforth completes his book business trilogy by asking: Who becomes a bookseller?... What type of people work in a bookshop? Are they passionate, slightly unworldly bibliophiles, who live and breathe books? Or are they a bunch of slackers, who break out ... Read More...
This is one of the editors' favourite ever Dabbles. ZMKC recalls an early experience of being too creative for a 'creativity-first' school, and explains how it has influenced her career as a blogger... When I was about nine I began exchanging letters with a girl called Paula who was in the ... Read More...
On a stage at the Festival of Nature – one of Bristol’s many, many spurious summer festivals – a man and a woman wearing flat caps with fox ears were performing a song about a rabbit going hop, hop, hop. My girls were hopping away on the Floating Harbour’s cobbled ground. ... Read More...
Following on from his hugely entertaining post about life as a bookseller, Steerforth pays tribute to the now-extinct breed of Full English-eating, Austin Montego-driving publishers' sales reps... In my last Dabbler post I wrote about my first year in bookselling and casually mentioned that every publisher's sales rep' used to be ... Read More...
I have lately become preoccupied with the desolate brown eyes of Jose Carreras. They star in this footage of his attempt to record the soundtrack to West Side Story under the pitiless direction of Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein, as Mahlerman showed us, is a real mensch. Also a bullying bastard. But who ... Read More...
Douglas address the fundamentals... Twenty years ago I was somehow able to think about sex all day long. I could think about sex even when I wasn’t thinking about it. Temporarily distracted by bus schedules, term papers, potential muggers, or the likelihood of being able to pay my rent, sex still ... Read More...
Working at Waterstone's in the early 1990s, Steerforth quickly discovered that bookshops were magnets for eccentrics, kleptomaniacs and the mentally ill - and that was just the staff... Sometimes I find it hard to believe that I spent the best part of 18 years working in bookshops. Where did all the ... 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...
