Browsing category blogging

gratuitous photo


My hair is chaotic. It curls naturally. But never in a soft or pretty way. On weekends I try to give it a break from T3s and ghds. The result is never satisfactory. But I digress. Today Steph and I ate ice cream in waffle cones and lay on the floor and enjoyed the rush.

steve martin. writer. banjo picker. from way back.


Yesterday I said something about the EU and someone actually asked, “What’s the EU?” Yeah… The woman was from California and that made me feel a little better. But not much. There’s something seriously wrong with something, somewhere when you’re accused (and I was) of intellectual snobbery just because you can’t disguise the dumbfound when

princeton university library digital collection


One of the things I loved about the University of Manchester were the special collections (which date back to the 3rd millennium BC) held by the John Rylands Libraries. Stateside, Princeton University Library is digitising its rare books. Their latest addition is the Islamic Manuscripts Collection. The University Library holds approximately 9,500 Islamic manuscripts in

native tongue


I’m not a dialects person, but I’ve chased down people who are and the general consensus of those ‘in the know’ seems to be that it’s the Appalachian tongue that’s closest to Shakespeare’s own. That the mountains have served as an insulator and protected the mother tongue of their earliest immigrants. In the days following

on faces


It’s funny how we think we know the people we think we know. Until we find out we don’t. Then we’re surprised, but not really because we sort of suspected it all along. That we didn’t know them as well as we thought we did. Or at all. It makes us sad. Then it makes

big ben


We, Steph and I, climbed out at Bridge Street and ducked into a Tesco Express for paracetamol and hand sanitizer. Hoping they had a loo too. They didn’t. But they did have the bulk standard Meal Deal which we lunched on in the Square – a little patch of grass near Parliament which, it should

plez robinson hubbard. an obituary.


Plez Hubbard died last week. That wont mean a thing to you. Unless you live on the mountain…or used to. My mom called and said ‘they found him in his car’ and that someone had made out he’d been there for a while. But he hadn’t. His obituary showed up too soon for that. I’m

kafka. the metamorphosis.


“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” I don’t know about you, but the opening line of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis colours my view of the entire book. Whenever someone asks me to review it or just ‘tell me what you think