Category Archives: Travel notes

Have you noticed how getting children to “explore” something is nowadays a synonym for paedophilia, as in “the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible … Continue reading → Continue reading →

An elderly friend came round with her dachshund this morning for coffee and reminiscence with my mother-in-law. I took refuge in the sitting room, leaving the door to my study open; the dachshund, which didn’t seem to like me, trotted … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I have been showing my aged mother around Rome: hence no posts, though I may put up some photographs. The Financial Times recommended a restaurant in via pellegrino, ai bric, which was remarkable for two reasons. The windows showed a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Really for the benefit of Ben Hammersley I would like to record that I saw Mary Ray, the woman who dances with dogs, in action at a dog show yesterday. The only comparably grotesque performance I have ever seen involved … Continue reading → Continue reading →

In a comment on Pharyngula, Mrs Tilton points to a vividly illustrated story in Portuguese. You don’t want to see the pictures. Trust me. INstead I present the story they illustrated, suitably mangled through lycos’ translation service. The pronouns grow … Continue reading → Continue reading →

élevés à la presse de l’université d’Oxford, se trouvent ici. A fine companion site to the German-English dictionary that lives in my sidebar. Continue reading →

Steve Bell’s cartoon on Tuesday showed Tony Blair singing a version of “my Way” which rose to the final line “I gave Bush Myyyyyy ass.” This raised an important question of principle. Why not “arse?”. Tony Blair is a British … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Last night I finally watched Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys go America, for which I had paid $40, with shipping on Ebay. You can’t get it on DVD at all, and the video is out of print. Never was $40 better … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Too late, alas, to write to the Empereor Jean Bedel Bokassa, but now I know how I should have signed off my letter, thanks to the Amnesty International guide to composing letters in French. Pour les souverains, la formule d’appel … Continue reading → Continue reading →

For the first proper meal after ten days in Austria, we ate a curry. It was lamb, not pork, but what seemed really odd was that it came without whipped cream on top. Continue reading →