Jamie is on the trail of derelict psychiatric hospitals (not ‘asylums’, thanks all the same). I used to work at Cane Hill – well, I worked there for about six months in 1979, but it seemed a lot longer. Some of the pictures behind that link looked incredibly familiar, even with several years’ worth of [...]
I went to a graduation ceremony at the University of Manchester yesterday. I’ve worked there for most of the last six years, so I’d taught a lot of yesterday’s graduands in all three years; it was good to see them make it to the end. I’ve been to the last couple of graduations, but this [...]
So there I was in W.H. Smith’s, queuing up with my Radio Times, when… actually I wasn’t buying anything, I was hanging around the magazine racks waiting for my wife and daughter to get finished in Build-A-Bear; I just thought that would take too long to explain. In any case it’s only a bit of [...]
Not a lot of blogging around here lately. There are a number of reasons for that, not all of which I’m entirely aware of, but one factor has got to be work. Which reminds me, indirectly, of Jonathan Coe’s second novel, A touch of love. Two extracts: Friday 4th July, 1986 ‘Some years ago – [...]
In comments, Rob wrote: I remember when I was at school there was much polemic in the pages of Folk Review from the likes of Dick Gaughan and Pete Bellamy about whether one could truly call singer-songwriters “folk” at all: specifically about the extent to which they were likely to be writing songs that would [...]
A bit more oneirography (I don’t intend to make a habit of it). I had a dream last night which reminded me oddly of a dream I made up some years ago. (I wrote it for a short story (unpublished); the story was vaguely, partially autobiographical, but the dream was completely made up.) See if [...]
Jamie picks up on a handy new proposal for making use of all those ex-servicemen the Iraq war is eventually going to leave us with: Ex-servicemen and women should be retrained as teachers to bring military style discipline to tough inner city schools, a think tank has said. The Centre for Policy Studies says ex-soldiers [...]
A post-Christmas meme from Rob. 1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Wrapping paper. Bags are for bottles of wine. 2. Real tree or artificial? We switched to real trees a few years ago. This year was our first dead tree stuck in a bit of wood; it dried out quite a lot over the twelve [...]
19 September 2007 – 20:28
Rob has tagged me. I’ve had this particular meme once before, but I’m going to try it anyway and see if I come up with anything different. Total number of books owned About 1500, although my wife has just pointed out that many of them aren’t actually mine as such. (I had a big clearout [...]
“There’s only one thing worse than a folk singer, and that’s a Stalinist folk singer.” – Ian Birchall Hmm. Several years ago I was enthusiastically involved in getting Red Pepper to publish a piece by Steve Higginson (of the estimable Soulpool), demolishing the myth of progressive, national-popular folk music. When we look at the various [...]
I turned 47 recently. Yes, that is quite old. Lines from Krapp’s Last Tape come to mind, as they do from time to time. I’ve never linked to the Metro before, and never expected to. But this made me laugh out loud: At this weekend’s Bestival, a three-day music event on the Isle of Wight, [...]
4% of 568 is 22.72. Hold on to that thought. A ‘unit’ of alcohol is actually 10 ml; if you’re a man, your recommended weekly dosage amounts to a bit less than a pint of gin, or rather more than half a pint of cask strength whisky, or rather less than half a pint of [...]
I’ve been going through my non-fiction and turning out a lot of stuff that I’ve never read or never want to read again. There goes a biography of Herzl, one of Philip K. Dick and two biographies of Ezra Pound (what was I thinking?); there goes a book on Yugoslavia called “The Improbable Survivor” (of [...]
He was writing in 1959 (and he was wrong about the helicopters), but Debord got driving right: A mistake made by all urban planners is to consider the private car (and its by-products, such as the motorcycle) as essentially a means of transport. In reality, it is the most notable material symbol of the notion [...]
The following letter appeared in the 20th October Independent. Sir: My fellow countrymen seem bewildered by the niqab, a bewilderment rapidly turning into anger and repulsion; but it is just a simple garment with a simple purpose.Every other person in Britain has been affected by infidelity, and it all boils down to either party having [...]
Here are some of the things that happened when I was nine (give or take a couple of months either way), and which I remember. (I’m using the BBC site rather than Wikipedia, which doesn’t seem to have much British news from that far back.) Apollo 11 (I remember watching the landing) The introduction of [...]
It’s been a bad week for deaths. Arthur Lee died last Thursday. If you drew a line from Brian Wilson’s ice-cream symphonies to Dylan’s lyrical manifestoes, you’d meet the Arthur Lee of Forever Changes right in the middle. Arthur Lee was a great artist, responsible for some of the strangest and most beautiful moments in [...]
So we’ve just helped ourselves to a couple of chocolates from a left-over box of Miniature Heroes when our son walks in. He’s eating an apple, but his attention is caught by the chocolates and he begins at once to plead and beg in a frankly rather undignified manner. Wife points out that he’s got [...]
When my son was born the midwife commented on his oily skin – “he’ll be a spotty teenager”. My own skin is noted for its sebaceous quality, so my reaction wasn’t surprise so much as anticipatory fellow-feeling – tempered by the utter inability to imagine this eight-pound armful as a teenager, spotty or otherwise. He’s [...]
I probably shouldn’t go to National Trust houses. Visiting one this afternoon I was accosted by an attendant, who wanted me to know that the strip of linen in a glass case on the wall was a garter which had been worn by Charles I. As I walked away, I couldn’t resist giving a quick [...]
