Blog Archives

23rd July 2007: Rome

So, you want to visit Ancient Rome? You’ll find it’s been invaded by Vandals and Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Renaissances and Baroques and Italians driving vespas, and most recently of all by the tourist hordes. “If you come to the

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

22nd December 2006: Bach in Karhide

Listening to my Bach’s Christmas Hits tape while I was wrapping presents this afternoon, it struck me that two songs in a row seem to be about Ehrenrang. Now I don’t understand German, so I don’t know what they were

Posted in Books, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

20th September 2006: Some reflections on life validating experiences on trains

We own our apartment! Both sides of our apartment! And I actually got a proper night’s sleep last night, for the first time for absolutely ages. I wake up somewhere around six pretty much no matter what time I get

Posted in Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face, Whimsy

25th June 2006: Tangled Web

“Your nightmares are somebody’s daydreams, Your daydreams are somebody’s lies. Lies ain’t no harder than telling the truth, The truth is the perfect disguise.” Kris Kristofferson. I’m not in HP fandom, and I’ve been reading the MsScribe kerfuffle with bemused

Posted in Among Others, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

6th June 2006: Best Tombstone Ever

After spending most of the morning reading pretty much all the extant Phoenician there is, both online and in Harden’s The Phoenicians which is the only thing I have in the house — must get something more recent — I

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

22nd Feb-Mar 2st 2005 Concussion updates

[I think this is worth having, because reading through these makes it really apparent what fixed my concussion. Spoiler, it wasn’t Western medicine.] 22nd March So I listened to all you lot and went to the doctor. I never go

Posted in Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

21st February 2006: Another @#$%ing research experience (My concussion post)

So, there I was sitting in a Chinese cafe on Ste Catherine half way through a bowl of won ton soup — indeed, half way through a won ton — with a pot of tea in front of me, with

Posted in Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

21st October 2005: Contains obscenities (Emily Dickinson guy)

I was in Argo yesterday evening, a little independent new bookshop on St Catherine West, near the second-hand bookshops Westcott, Vortex and Astro. I went in to see if they could order Noel Streatfeild’s reprinted 1930s adult novel Saplings for

Posted in Books, Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

1st August 2005: What I did on my summer holiday

There’s a megalithic burial chamber at Pentre Ifan in the Mynydd Presceli that has a seventeen ton bluestone balanced on top of three pointed stones, and it’s been balanced there like that for the last five thousand years. As with

Posted in Human culture, Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face

21st July 2005: Porthcawl

My Aunt Jane is completely mad. (Rysmiel, when informed of this, said “Oh, you know!” in a deeply relieved tone.) She’s the kind of completely mad you get if you’re eighty-two and you have never actually grown up. She can’t

Posted in Life as it blossoms out in a jar or a face