Anna and Gertrude

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“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange.” – Gertrude Abercrombie After Pied Piper and The Thinking, my explorations led me into the byways of British literature of WW2 evacuation and evacuees. On that journey, I made – and continue to … Read more

The Thinking

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This post is in answer to the question “Operation Pied Piper: What were they thinking?” At least in terms of the evacuation scheme. The choice of code-name remains ambiguous.   It begins with a little history. Napoleon In the first years of the 19th century, Napoleon made no secret of his intention to invade Britain, … Read more

Crime Past, Crime Present, and Crime Future

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 Many people know that the poet T. S. Eliot was very fond of cats and indeed created some wonderful cat characters and wrote poems about them. Many people also know that he loved practical jokes – things like exploding cigars and farting cushions. They may also know that he was a fan of detective fiction … Read more

The Seduction of Sir Knack-a-Rib 

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OuLiPo meets Anapestic Tetrameter and the mad, bad and dangerous to know Bored Lyeron (If you feel you must read Lord Byron, or if you are unfamiliar with The Destruction of Sennacherib  go here.) The Seduction of Sir Knack-a-Rib  The Shakespearian came down like the gulf on the wold, And his so-shorts were gleaming like … Read more

Daffodils Nodding in the Cheese

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Daffodil:  good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy. – from the surrealist dictionary definition generator.  Windy today so lots of daffodils nodding and bobbing about in the cheese. Here’s something from the Oulipo Compendium that’s not quite Wordsworth: The Imbeciles I wandered lonely as a crowd That floats on high o’er valves and ills When all at … Read more

All Our Yesterdays with the #1936Club

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There was a period in the early 1960s when my parents had a television (in those days you rented) and one of the programs I liked to watch was All Our Yesterdays produced by Granada Television. It was a look back in time based on the newsreel footage of that week twenty-five years ago –  … Read more

Bertie Wooster v. Christopher Robin

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P.G.Wodehouse and A.A. Milne were the same age and in 1941 they were both close to 60. As young men about town in Edwardian London they had moved in the same social and literary circles, belonged to the same club and played on the same cricket team. They were friends.  Bertie Wooster and Christopher Robin … Read more

What ho! George Orwell and Cancel Culture

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Few things in this war have been more morally disgusting than the present hunt after traitors and Quislings. At best it is largely the punishment of the guilty by the guilty. In England the fiercest tirades against Quislings are uttered by Conservatives who were practising appeasement in 1938 and Communists who were advocating it in … Read more

The Learners’ Manifesto from Frank Smith

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A six-point manifesto from psycholinguist Frank Smith – another of those items found in the basement. I must have prepared it as a hand-out for some long-forgotten purpose or another. I was happy to be reunited.  Frank Smith – who died last year – was one of those essential giants in the land of learning, … Read more

#6Degrees From the Gulf of Siam to Pianosa via Anglesey

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 “Phosphorescence is a process in which energy absorbed by a substance is released relatively slowly in the form of light. … When the stored energy becomes locked in by the spin of the atomic electrons, a triplet state can occur, slowing the emission of light, sometimes by several orders of magnitude.” Phosphorescence is also the … Read more

One Month in The Year of Living Hunkered

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February came and went. As Februarys do. As we approach the anniversary of “the year of living hunkered” in what we call our gilded cage, I’m reflecting on the month. We had snow. Lots of it. Then more snow. This made for some icy walks and some muddy walks and early morning vistas of pink … Read more