2,607 words
The first thing we heard was the bells, the familiar ching ching ching coming through the frosty air from a distance. My mother would turn out the living-room lights and we would all crowd to the window to watch the arrival of the great man himself, my little (and identical twin) brothers standing on chairs or each other to get a good view. Then the amplified Christmas carols could be heard: Once in Royal David’s City, Silent Night, We Three Kings. (more…)
2,434 words
Victorian children would play a game, perhaps on rainy days, called “hunt the thimble”, in which just such an object was hidden in a room, and competitors would race to be the first to find it. The only rule was that the thimble had to be hidden in plain sight. Today’s children are doubtless too busy slaying zombies for such a charming parlor-game, but they needn’t be concerned. The adults are playing it for them. (more…)
2,450 words
I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.
-Andy Warhol
Valerie Solanas took the elevator, got off at the 4th floor.
She pointed the gun at Andy, saying, “You cannot control me anymore”.
-Lou Reed and John Cale, Songs for Drella
2,858 words
Here was a population not convinced that old England was as good as possible.
George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical
In October, 2009, I was ranked No. 41 in a list of the 100 most powerful right-wingers in Britain. I am not sure about the “right winger” bit, preferring to consider myself a Whig.
Nigel Farage, Flying Free (more…)
2,183 words
London’s Leicester Square has always been the heart of England’s cinema-land. With premiers, red carpets, and the full imported, tariff-free quota of Hollywood razzmatazz, it used to be quite possible to walk across the Square and see De Niro or Kate Winslet swanning around in front of a bank of photographers all trying to get the star to look their way. However, nestled in the historic Square’s environs were a brace of independent cinemas that the discerning cinema-goer felt a bit smug for knowing about. (more…)
1,180 words
The London Evening Standard is a venerable newspaper now distributed free in the city of my birth. It launched in 1829 and became free of charge in 2009. George Orwell wrote The Moon Under Water for the paper, in which he described his ideal pub, in 1946, the same year he wrote Politics and the English Language. Hopefully, he wrote it in a pub. The Standard has always been very much a part of London life and tradition. (more…)
2,380 words
Advertising is considered an extension of show business.
Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman of marketing group WPP
Advertising seems a very modern phenomenon but it has been with us for millennia. A Roman tavern with a painting of a vine over the door was advertising for customers. A piece of papyrus found in Egypt and dated to around 3000 BC was written by a weaver wishing to persuade his fellow citizens to use his services rather than those of his competitors. (more…)
2,493 words
Starmer’s (Third) World Tour
Sir Keir Starmer must have had mixed emotions when looking at his recent approval ratings in the opinion of the Great British public. On the one hand, he is polling at about the same level as Nicolae Ceauşescu was when the Romanian army took him and his wife out onto waste ground and shot them against a wall on Christmas Day, 1989, at the climax of the Romanian Revolution. (more…)
2,012 words
A TV series that captures an era will always be like one of those time capsules schoolchildren used to bury in their school grounds, a tin box full of examples of day-to-day objects and destined to lie unseen in the earth until someone digs it up decades – or even centuries – later and gets a glimpse of how people used to live. One such series was Chancer, ITV’s 1991, 12-part drama set in the England of the 1980s. (more…)
2,145 words
There is an old joke in the UK about the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, between 1979 and 1990, and it runs something like this. When the Iron Lady took power, she found a country with an ailing economy. Fortunately, she reinvigorated that country in just ten years. Unfortunately, that country was Japan. (more…)
1,503 words
Cram as much pleasure as you can into your life and rail against the pain that you have to suffer as a result.
-Shane MacGowan.
Stay on the other side of the road
Because you can never tell.
We’ve the thirst of a gang of devils,
We’re the boys from the County Hell.
-The Pogues, Boys from the County Hell (more…)
1,622 words
Some diseases have different names but the effect is still the same. German Measles, for example, is also known as Rubella, which sounds as though she might be a bad girl from a sci-fi movie. (more…)
2,748 words
November 4, Day 1
On the gathering storm comes a tall, handsome man
With a dusty black coat and a red right hand.
Nick Cave, Red Right Hand
Watching The US Presidential Election as an Englishman, and watching it from Central America, I feel simultaneously close to the action and far removed from it. (more…)