Roll ’em Pete

Posted on October 3, 2002 by acb

I passed this one on to Charles Nevin at the Sindie. I wonder if it will make it into print; I wonder if it will even make it through the firewall. But it fills me with a warm and floaty feeling.

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drink from the firehose

Posted on October 3, 2002 by acb

of purest frothing righteousness. Here’s a taste:

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news values

Posted on September 30, 2002 by acb

Two retired MPs turn out to have had an affair in the 1980s. A still active politician (and MP) turns out to have ordered the murder of ten people in the 1970s. Which of these stories is news?

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all the stuff

Posted on September 29, 2002 by acb

That I have been fumbling to say about the warhards is here

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Satanan

Posted on September 29, 2002 by acb

Perkele!
as my old Finnish workmate in the sawmill used to say.
I found this almost perfectly incredible story while spending a happy sunday blog-rolling. It came through Teresa Hayden Nielsen, who I used to see around the Well. It is, to all appearances, quite true, and charming. In fact it’s everything that globalisation ought to mean, and the most romantic story since the Albanian crown was offered to Aubrey Herbert in 1922.

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note from an old story

Posted on September 29, 2002 by acb

you know a piece of work is well started when you can see just how and in what ways it’s bad

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The march in London

Posted on September 29, 2002 by acb

I was there, with wife and daughter; so were a lot of other people: the police reckon 150,000 and this is credible. Estimates of 400,000 from the organisers are not. They are simply plucked out of the air to match the Countryside Alliance demo against a fox-hunting ban. It was worrying how much I found to disagree with on my own side. Of course, the closer things slide to a full-on world war between the USA/Israel and the Arab world, the more there will be to disgust us on both sides.

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these people are sick

Posted on September 26, 2002 by andrewb

But their sickness isn’t obvious.

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feeling strange

Posted on September 24, 2002 by andrewb

One of those odd little moments of equilibrium in freelance life. I think I have done everything I should have for the moment: a profile and two book reviews for the Guardian; an enormous mass of book corrections and acknowledgements. The only other overdue stuff are three thank-you letters and a book review for Ian Pitchford of a work that is important, but incredibly badly written. Or perhaps a work which is important, but which I am to stupid to review.

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talking to morons

Posted on September 24, 2002 by andrewb

I wnet to get my hair cut yesterday and when I got home my wife and daughter laughed more usual. It turns out the hairdresser has done her best, with very defective materials, to give me a mullet. Behind my ears an inch of ratty fringe curtains the back of my neck. I know I didn’t ask for this, but I think I’ve worked out why I got it: when she asked how I wanted the back done — after I had told her to cut it off my ears — I said “proportionately”. This is not a term in the vocabulary of a Saffron Walden hairdresser.

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