February 2010
25 posts
The syllable OUGH can be pronounced in 9 different...
“A rough, dough-faced thoughtful ploughman emerged from a slough to walk through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing.” (via somethingchanged: a Landmark bag: juliafrances)
On smiling at strangers
I feel disloyal to my beloved Bethnal Green in saying this, but I’ve noticed that there is a lot more smiling between strangers going on in my new neighbourhood. It’s positively verging on American levels of stranger-smiling, and I really like it. One of the strangers I smiled at even gave me a £1 discount on a phone card for ‘being a nice girl’, and although I felt this...
“The Guardian has also received a letter from Trader Faulkner, an 82-year-old...”
– Anna Ford v Martin Amis – the final episode (for now) | Books | guardian.co.uk
Oh, this story just keeps giving and giving, doesn’t it? I dream of one day attaining the kind of success that makes people want to write in to a newspaper to complain about incidences of my childhood reticence....
On something I was told I'd outgrow
You’ll outgrow this, they said to me, as I sat on the examination table at the paediatrician’s office with my mouth clamped around a mist-spewing nebulizer, a paper towel clutched under my chin to catch the drool. There were some wintery weeks in my adolescence when this was required several times, and my mother would ask me – thinking of the mounting co-pays – whether I really needed to go back...
“Rarely one to turn the other cheek, the novelist Martin Amis – who was the...”
– Martin Amis responds: A poor godparent, yes, but I did not ‘fill in time’ at friend’s deathbed | Books | The Guardian
Is a national newspaper really the place to address grudges you are holding against old friends? I didn’t think so, but now I am going to write all of my...
“Out last week drinking champagne with three dazzling blonde women – it is the...”
– (via gauntlet)
How very odd - I thought that Rod Liddle was not going to be the editor of the Independent after all.
Anyway, in case you are interested in a countering opinion by someone whose view of the world is not lodged in the 1950s, here is my advice for women on how to make men marry them:
...
“Basically, I am looking for a male Jean.”
– A flattering remark from a girlfriend of mine who is hoping to meet a nice man from New York who lives in London. She’s great. Applications to the usual address.
“You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with...”
– The Guardian
Did I ever tell you about the time I spoke to Margaret Atwood on the phone? I said ‘Hello, [redacted]’s office and she said, ‘Hello this is Margaret Atwood’ and in my head I said, ‘EEEEEEEEE’ but I think out loud I just said something like,...
WatchNext time I start mumbling discontentedly about moving back to the US, please remind me to re-watch this video.
BBC - BBC Radio 5 live Programmes - Victoria... →
Things I love about living in Britain, #217: A politician complaining that he can’t expense first-class seats on the train is worthy of a national uproar. He goes on the radio to defend himself, claiming that he can’t travel in standard class because the passengers there have ‘a totally different outlook in life’. Listen, enjoy, guffaw.
“Jessica and Elisabeth Wakefield are blond twins, perfect size sixes, identical...”
– Sweet Valley, High Art: The Book Bench : The New Yorker
I can’t decide how I feel about the fact that Sweet Valley High is now a cultural artifact deserving of reference in the New Yorker. Well, no: I can. I feel old. (via somethingchanged)
“Star Trek fans, prepare to be disappointed. Kirk, Spock and the rest of the crew...”
– Starship pilots: speed kills, especially warp speed - space - 16 February 2010 - New Scientist
In which Dadelstein breaks the hearts of Trekkies with the aid of SCIENCE.
On missing people I don't know
This is the first commute from the new house to the same old office. The first time I won’t pass the father who brings his two small kids to school by pushing them along on his giant dad-sized bicycle. It’s the first time I won’t walk down the stairs under a plaque commemorating the most civilian casualties in the Blitz, passing a faded wreath and a black-and-white photocopied photo of a...
“Ben, we’re in a van. Alyssa’s driving, me and Jean are up front, and...”
– I was going to write a post to sum up Saturday’s house-moving experience, but I think that this pithy email that Hetty sent on her iPhone to ex-Flatmate Ben sums it up perfectly.
(Without this crew I almost certainly would have been found crushed under a pile of suitcases and cardboard boxes....
“Q. My boyfriend and I are having a battle royal over the use of apostrophes in...”
– Chicago Style Q&A: Plurals
EEK! Dealbreaking, right?
On the things you find when you are moving
I found a box of your things, Ben says. He has been living in the room that was originally mine, when I moved in to this flat all of those years ago. It was wedged in the back of the closet, he says, so it was obviously very important to you. There are some amazing photos in there.
It is a squashed shoebox. And there are, indeed, some amazing photos in there: the last photos that I ever got...
Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk →
This novel, recommended to me by my singular South African friend, is so engrossing that while reading it on the tube yesterday I didn’t notice that I was sort of snuggling the complete stranger next to me for about four stops.
“I’m so honoured to be here,” he continued, “my work as an activist is based on...”
– ShalomLife - Bono Goes to Shul
Aw, you GUYS.
“Hi
I stumbled across your profile while searching for a film on here i...”
– For some reason in the past couple of days I have started to receive this kind of Facebook spam. But I am kind of touched in this case by the odd poignancy of the request to begin exchanging messages to see if we have anything in common. Anything? ANYTHING?
:-(
On items not to pack
I’d almost forgotten about packing, which happens when you don’t move for four and a half years: the upheaval, the piles and stacks, the sneezing. The realisation that being a somewhat disorganised person means that here and there I find small treasures that I haven’t thought about in hundreds of days, which I will briefly regard with wonder and then deposit in a charity shop. Except for the...
On Lauren's thirtieth birthday
It’s today! And thus thirty has never seemed liked such an extraordinarily young age.
Sadly for me I am not able to celebrate with her in person, but happily for Lauren she is in Puerto Rico with some monkeys on Cayo Santiago, because that (of course) is how she rolls.
(In honour of the day, I have written her a birthday poem, but I will not reproduce it here because it is such a firm...