Wine is the ultimate recession-proof leisure pursuit, argues Henry Jeffreys. Not least because it contains alchohol... A wine merchant opened up near my flat in East London about three years ago just as the recession was taking off and people were losing their jobs. They didn’t offer much below £10 a ... Read More...
Society
Do American and English parents do everything the opposite way round? Rita investigates... I usually side with linguistic purists who consider "verbing" a sign of the collapse of civilization. But in the case of the word "parenting" it is surely appropriate, for Parenting is now a competitive sport of Olympic proportions. ... Read More...
No, I haven’t been on an extended summer break. My father suddenly became unwell and died after just a few weeks, on the day before the Olympics opening ceremony. I’ve not felt up to writing posts, but on this beautifully sunny weekend, I’m feeling a little more like my old ... Read More...
To Hereford, on business. I’d never been before and was looking forward to it. It rained very heavily throughout my visit and the cathedral was closed. *** Oh goody, we have a pandemic of inactivity. The 10 o'clock Beeb news got into a fine logical tangle with a piece asking “what has ... Read More...
Following Rio Ferdinand's Twitter troubles, Mr Slang examines the language of supposed race-betrayal... Choc-ice. Haven’t touched one since 1989 myself. Forty-one that very day, as it happened, and, hold on Mr G, just want to check your results. Black forest gateau, tiramisu, death by chocolate...the sweet trolley is as off-limits as ... Read More...
Builders have come, so Mrs Brit and the girls fled the house. The builders are of course very mannish men. Gnarly men. Practical men, who work with their hands and communicate in grunts and obscenities and take at least two sugars in their tea. Like all good building crews this ... Read More...
Few pop songs can bear too much reality when it comes to sexual politics. Here are four that tell it like it is... Boy meets girl, is happy. Boy loses girl, is sad. And reverse the genders. With those four plots you’ve covered most pop, which as a genre doesn’t tend ... Read More...
In which Mr Slang takes stroll through Great Wen, calls for Armageddon... Some Lord’s day. I know not which and care less for I have no time for man-made jacks-in-boxes and believe but in a single rule: that after A comes B and thence to C and thus is the tale ... Read More...
What Dabbler wouldn't like to get paid for being the government's official Curator of Eccentricities? Worm goes in search of the man who had the best job in Britain... When the Festival of Britain landed on the south bank of the Thames in the summer of 1951, Architect and festival director ... Read More...
This week Mr Slang discusses family values... I have noticed, may I assume that I am not alone, a new linguistic abomination that must now be listed among the many repellent inventions that have come with the Olympics. For this neologism we can presumably thank the PR company that coined the ... Read More...
