11.30.03
Posted in Dreaming of England at 1:30 am by
Winter is coming.
If only winter in London was a little more like this, and a little less like, well, nothing in particular. The British Isles, with their freakishly temperate climes, manage to be chilly and damp, but in a vague way. It is rarely properly cold in the south, but it almost always fails to be warm. I remember my old geography teaching alleging that Britain has no climate; it only has weather.
And, by and large, that weather is limp and washed out.
That said, it’s been raining a great deal recently. Last Sunday’s weekly football was conducted in a wind-whipped rainstorm, the looming cloud cover spouting bathtub after bathtub onto the grass. It was both miserably foul and curiously exhilarating. Once we were running, the trickling clamminess of my top seemed less chilling. At the same time, my legs either warmed up or went completely numb, blocking out the pain.
I was irresistibly reminded of school sports, standing shivering on the rugby field at three quarter while the games master attempted to explain precisely why he’d blown up for yet another foul (knock on, handling in a ruck, offside, coming in from the side; plenty to choose from). At least this was preferable to tackling practice, always performed on the muddiest patch in the field.
Of all the things I thought I might end up repeating from my schooldays, I never thought it would be this.
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11.27.03
Posted in Flotsam at 5:08 pm by
In which:
- We note that the latest issue of Wired magazine is themed around notorious existential explorer, Philip K. Dick
- We anticipate with glee two very important new books arriving in the post:
- We raise our glass and sing victory songs to Paul, who spent half of last night fixing my PC such that I now have working broadband, and the other half watching Quatermass films
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Posted in Meeja at 12:50 pm by
I know it’s uncouth of me to be writing this, but I’m sure we’re all thinking along similar lines.
I’m not conspiracy-minded enough to think that this is true (hush at the back), but after Tony Blair’s second health scare in little over a month, this is now looking remarkably similar to the way a Granita-based Blair exit strategy would play out.
For Tony Blair to step down on health grounds would spare all of the awkward questions over succession, and would enable Brown to step up in time for the next election without looking like an assassin.
The truly paranoid interpretation would focus on the very Blairite Queen’s Speech yesterday, illiberal even for this essentially authoritarian government. Brown would be able to sweep in, sweep the nastier elements (like ID cards and nicking asylum seekers kids) off the table, and sweep up come election time.
Sadly, I am a long-time subscriber to the cock-up theory of politics (and history, and science…), so I don’t believe a word of it.
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Posted in Meeja at 9:23 am by
The Framley Examiner has been one of the most reliably absurd reads online for a couple of years now. If you don’t know it, it’s a spoof local rag, serving “the people of Framley, and the surrounding villages - out as far as Whoft to the north and St Eyots to the north-east and Wripple to the north.”
They released a book version last Christmas, and a second book, ‘Historic Framley’, has just been published (available, as they say, “from all good bookshops and some exceptionally good greengrocers”.)
Someone at the Department of Media, Culture and Sport seems to have become a bit confused, though. The accompanying Framley Museum website is site of the week at the Department’s 24 Hour Museum service.
Someone’s last week working on the website, I suspect.
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11.25.03
Posted in Bloggery at 9:54 am by
Sifting through the spam is one of those chores usually done on automatic. But sometimes I stop and wonder exactly which lists I’m appearing on. At the moment I’m receiving shedloads of mail offering to sell me prescription drugs. Why? Am I listed on someone’s website under “obviously needs medication”? If I receive pills for multiple personality disorder through the post, how can I be sure I didn’t order them?
The spam does tend to come in similar batches, so the juxtaposition of two pieces today set me wondering afresh. The first was titled “More fun with my wife”. Hm. My hypothetical alter ego seems to be leading an intriguing life. It turns out that it’s trying to sell me anti-wrinkle cream. I am suitably scandalised.
The next message is offering to subscribe me to “CongressDaily”, a daily email detailing the political heave-ho inside the Washington beltway. I see no connection, and I struggle to imagine what my spam profile says about me.
Elsewhere, and assuredly unrelated, we are receiving reports that up in The Deep North they have finally found a Weapon of Moss Destruction.
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11.24.03
Posted in Meeja at 11:46 am by
Regular readers will have sensed that listening to the Today programme sometimes leaves me fuming. This morning it left me quivering with laughter.
The story was a real piece of forgettable festive fluff: turkeys are being played music in an attempt to keep them relaxed. The report, though, was inspired, becoming increasingly surreal as different types of music were played to the poor gobblers.
Thanks to the Beeb’s aggressively open access policy, you can already hear the report online.
Forget Jonny Wilkinson (as if you could); the producer who thought playing whale song to turkeys might work on radio deserves some kind of medal.
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11.20.03
Posted in Flotsam at 11:20 am by
It’s somehow a week since I set out the After Ravilious puzzle to annoy the righteous, so it’s surely time to round up the results.
An impressive, um, variety of solutions were offered. Honorable mentions start with Andy for a swarm of imaginative solutions, all of which were cleverer than mine (is there really a London pub called the Oscilloscope, Andy?). One idea — that the second halves of the words all have other meanings — was suggested by more than one person. Perhaps I’m the only one who can’t see how that works.
Another honorable mention goes to Dr B, for by far the cleverest solution; that this was a reverse alphabet in which the ‘A’ word contains a ‘z’, the ‘B’ word contains a ‘y’, and so on. I’ve never heard of this before, but I like it and only wish I’d thought of doing it. Dr B misses out on the winner’s podium only due to the evidence failing to back him up in any sense whatsoever.
And so to the one-and-three-quarters of you who got the correct solution. The Northern Professor wrote:
“Reading down, the second letters of the words from G to O, that is from GRYPHON to OSCILLOSCOPE give one R A V I L I O U S. SO we were after R A V I L I O U S all along.”
Absolutely. And if we read down the whole alphabet in this way, we get the full message:
“May old Ravilious rue my poor go”.
The one person who supplied the complete answer was Kevan of As Above. Even more impressively, he got it approximately two hours after I’d posted the puzzle. A match-winning performance, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Kevan was sharp enough to get the principle and hence the answer in true crossword fashion: before he’d worked out every last word. I’d rather thought this might happen, because one or two of the words were tricksy, to say the least.
‘Y’ was merely obscure; it was the Scandinavian tree of life, Yggdrasil. ‘F’, however, was an appalling cheat, for which I now publicly and unreservedly apologise. The answer was ‘F.D.’, for ‘Fidei Defensor’, as inscribed on all British coinage. It is the only entry in the dictionary that starts with FD, and so, unfortunately, fitted my needs.
I’ll post some further comments on what I learnt later, but for now, here’s the full alphabet:
AMPHITHEATRE
BATHYSPHERE
CYMBAL
DOLPHIN
ELM
F.D.
GRIFFIN/GRYPHON
HANSOM CAB
IVY
JIGSAW
KLAXON
LION
MOUNTAIN
NUTCRACKER
OSCILLOSCOPE
PRIEST
QUARTET
REFRIGERATOR
SMOKING JACKET
TYPEWRITER
UPHOLSTERY/ER
VORTEX
WOLF
X-RAY
YGGDRASIL
ZODIAC
Compare to the puzzle itself here.
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11.19.03
Posted in Flotsam at 1:20 pm by
Curse me, curse the modern world; I was entitled to a new mobile phone, so I damn well went and got it.
It takes pictures. It sends pictures. It plays games and curious entertainments of swirly coloured blobs. It has an organiser (ah, another organiser in my life, completely separate from all of the other calendars I have; perfect). If I had the patience, it could probably write and post this for me. It is polyphonic.
It is polyphonic.
This could mean only one thing. As I took it home on the train I had to discreetly struggle to ensure that, before I received a call on it, I had to manage to select, among the pop ditties, snatches of mood music, flamboyant arpeggios and berzerk cartoon breakdowns, the one ring tone that doesn’t make me feel like a complete merchant banker.
Thankfully, there was one, and I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot more of it in corridors in restaurants in the coming months. It’s called ‘Old Phone’, and it sounds like exactly that; an old-fashioned bell phone.
Now, the more devious option available, I’ve discovered, is to record your own sound on the phone, and use that as the ring tone. The possibilities are, I fear, endless.
My two ideas at the moment are:
- A recording of someone saying “Your phone is ringing”, set to repeat ever louder as it goes on
- A particularly disturbing few seconds of Tuvan throat-singing
Each has its shady merits, particularly in terms of causing existential discomfort to men in suits. I’m open to further suggestions, otherwise I’ll let you know.
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11.17.03
Posted in London at 6:32 pm by
I couldn’t maintain any pretence of covering London in this thing, this jotter, without acknowledging this expansion of the classic tube map into three dimensions. Stations that serve several lines are fudged, unfortunately; I’d like to see them as vertical tubes running from the surface. Otherwise this is great.
I got a completely different view of London over the weekend. I flew in and out of London City Airport (pictured). It made for quite a ride, particularly given that Friday was a windy day, and our 80-seat plane was clearly giving its best impression of a rollercoaster. The smug businessman behind me rapidly went from “Oh my!” through “Oh dear!” to just “Oh!” Meanwhile, I was enjoying the alien landscape of what is now rebranded as “Thames Gateway”. Power stations, ports, old towns, new towns, all carved tight against the severe edge of the Thames itself. It’s really quite beautiful in its way; knowing East Anglian saltflats as I do, I can assure you it’s certainly the best way of seeing it.
The Dartford Bridge and the Isle of Sheppey, in particular, were easily identifiable. (All aerial images found in the very browsable online galleries of Adrian Warren, where the bird’s eye view of Oxford Circus really catches the eye.)
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11.14.03
Posted in Flotsam at 12:15 pm by
The joy of the health food shop:
For sale: Desiccated liver tablets
Mm. With a nice, wet Chianti.
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11.13.03
Posted in Flotsam at 10:26 am by
The challenge from The Deep North to decipher a hidden meaning in the Alphabet Mug designed by Eric Ravilious remains unmet. You can read about it here.
So, faced with a temporary obstacle, I have, in the best traditions, moved the goalposts. While we continue to dig at the Ravilious problem, I’ve set my own, parallel, puzzle. It wasn’t just a distraction: I started by asking how, if I were to hide a message in an alphabet, I would go about it.
The result is the After Ravilious alphabet, albeit more cut & paste than arts & crafts. It does, however, have a guaranteed, 100% proof, hidden element, and you are invited to give it a crack.
Let me know how you get on with it.
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11.12.03
Posted in Film at 1:45 pm by
20th Century Fox are about to release a completely new creature into the world. At the start of December you will be able to buy all four sci-fi/horror/action films in the Alien series, as the Alien Quadrilogy on DVD.
What the hell, you may reasonably ask, is a quadrilogy? I can only suppose that the producers considered the correct term — ‘quartet’ — to be effete and dry. However, the problem with coining ‘quadrilogy’, apart from it making them look like barbarian know-nothings, is that it’s an oafish neologism. It manages to lumpenly fall halfway between suggesting ‘four’ (they must have been thinking of ‘quad-bike’), and ‘three’ (’-rilogy’ really doesn’t leave many options, does it?). Worst of all, thanks to the global reach of these films, some coked-up production manager has successfully launched a real three-legged word into the world where it will gain increasing usage.
If I’m sounding snobbish about this, I’m not particularly sorry. Let me repeat: I don’t mind them coming up with a new word to indicate a group of four related things. Anything that saves us from yet another film trilogy is a Good Thing. What I object to is them coming up with such an obvious dog of a word, and not caring enough to run it past anyone with a semblance of sense first. ‘Quadrilogy’? I ask you.
Rant off. What is interesting is a quick shuftie at what you get in your quadrilogy:
- Two versions of each of the four films.
- Commentary from director, cast, writers, producers on each film (although it’s not clear whether there’s a different commentary for each version.
- A myriad of making-of, pre-, in- and post-production documentaries.
- Deleted scenes.
- Any other rubbish they could find. I mean, anything.
What I find interesting is that one of the big selling points of DVD ’special editions’ is the Director’s Cut. Films, more than novels, for instance, are subject to pressures from and interference by a whole host of people who consider the film to be ‘theirs’. The director, the editor, the producer(s), the stars, the studio, the distributors, all potentially have the power to change aspects of the film they’re not happy with. And they will.
Nevertheless, the myth of the director as auteur persists even in mainstream cinema, and the audience often suspects that there was once a pure, magnificent vision of the director that has been wrecked by the meddling of ignorant producers. Just as often, of course, it’s judicious fixing of the director’s first attempt that saves a turkey, or elevates it from being tolerable to something rather better.
Regardless, I know plenty of people who invest in DVD editions of films on the basis that they offer something truer to the director’s vision than the original cinema release. And yet, what the original cinema release offered was a single, uninterruptable, linear experience. Film is designed that way. That’s what makes it so radically different to books, to painting, or to oral narrative. That’s what relates it to theatre so closely. Filling up the DVD with tinkerish bits and pieces of extra ‘film’ explode this idea of a single experience. Including deleted scenes makes mincemeat of what the film is. Does it include the information or emotions contained in a deleted scene? Or is it the other way round: is a suggested meaning in the film thereby erased if we’re aware that it was made explicit in a deleted scene?
And don’t even get me started on watching films with commentary. What fresh madness is this? Can you imagine reading a book with accompanying author’s notes explaining how certain scenes came about, what was intended, including amusing anecdotes about the book’s production. I’m sorry to say it, but the ‘real’ film, if such exists, is your rapidly fading memory of the first time you saw it, in the cinema, in the dark, with no cues or clues, as not the director but the Lumiere brothers intended.
Cinema is dead. Long live the fractal film experience.
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11.11.03
Posted in London at 12:30 pm by
One of the weekend newspapers contained a booklet listing 150 of the country’s top ‘gastropubs’. I’m sure you’ve noticed the phenomenon, and you can hardly avoid noticing the foul name. Gastropubs are pubs where you can get served a cooked meal that didn’t arrive frozen in a Brake Bros. van. The concept originated in the early 1990s, or in the Dark Ages, depending on your historical perspective. Presumably their decline inbetween times is related to the fact that Kit Marlowe was killed in a gastropub.
As usual, we can blame this shameless piece of rebranding on Londoners, who I sometimes think come to the city in order to forget everything about the places where they grew up. The result is that they imagine (or pretend) that everything was invented in London. Acknowledging any kind of regional precedent would mean, horrors, revealing that you are no more than a hick.
The latest buzz round my way is a restaurant called The Sea Cow. It is getting great reviews. It has a small, carefully selected wine list. The seating is fashionable long wooden tables. The fish is direct from Billingsgate every morning.* You can buy wet fish from the restaurant to cook at home. You can choose to have your fish grilled or battered. Whichever you choose, it will come with chips.
The Sea Cow is a fish ‘n chip shop. It is on the premises of the old chip shop. The proprietor has simply had the cunning to change everything except the fact that you can go and get cod and chips to take away in a paper bag.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve eaten there, and it was excellent. I will be going back. The food is better than its predecessor’s. It is not outrageously expensive (given how expensive fresh fish is these days). What I’m concerned about is that this is going to trigger a wave of rebranded chip shops across the country. They’ve done it in London: it must be a good idea. Mustn’t it?
And mark my words, it will spread. Fish is no longer cheap, hearty food, the Friday night filler we had when I was young when there was nothing left in the fridge (handily fulfilling one’s religious observation to boot). Cod is virtually fished out, and haddock will follow suit. These North Sea staples will soon seem more exotic than trendy Sea Bass or Red Snapper. Chip shops are going out of business. The only viable option is to acknowledge the changing circumstances and rebrand chip shops upwards.
As I say, I’m not concerned by The Sea Cow itself; it’s a good restaurant. It will do well. I’m concerned by what it will inspire. Soon, all over the country, chipping machines will be installed in uprepossessing street-corner chippies, and you’ll be forced to choose between an overpriced French red or a rubbish Champagne to accompany your two and two chips. You’ll be made to feel an ingenue if you choose to eat a known fish (such as delicious Hake) over some previously unclassified deep sea monstrosity.
Until, that is, in thirty years time, someone in Hoxton has the ingenious idea of starting up a cheap and cheerful hatch, no seating, serving just traditional fish like cod and haddock, now restocked and therefore cheap. It can hardly fail.
As a Londoner who just about remembers a world that isn’t London; I apologise.
* Contrary to reputation, Billingsgate fish patently isn’t the freshest available, not even the freshest to be had in London. A fishmonger who is supplied direct from the quayside will have fish easily a day fresher than Billingsgate.
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11.10.03
Posted in Flotsam at 5:55 pm by
I’m flying out to mittel-Europe this coming weekend. What a pleasure, then, to receive this email from my mittel-European airline:
DEAR PASENGER ,
WE HAVE RECEIVED YOUR RESERVATION VIA INTERNET AND WE WANT TO
ADVICE YOU THAT WE DO NOT CHARGE YOUR CREDITCARD HERE , YOU HAVE TO PAY AN PICK UP YOUR TICKET AT LONDON
CITY BEFORE DEPARTURE
THANKS AND BEST REGARDS
AIRLINE CALLCENTER
Gives you confidence, doesn’t it? In fact, with the dodgy spacing and CAPSLOCK ON, I’m surprised it made it through the spam filter.
I’m holding the fort at home while the rest of the household is working in some Franco-Prussian fiefdom. When I asked what it was like, the description was ‘many cake shops’. Now I know exactly what to expect.
Holding the fort also means a higher than average amount of rubbish TV. Huzzah for the Rugby World Cup! Boo to Pop Idol, chiz chiz. I even watched the seriously dodgy ‘Coupling’. It reminded me of another show by its author, Steven Moffat, which was the purest British farce I’ve ever seen.
The British strain of farce can tend to a sort of glacier-cold crystalline structure; everything in its right place, and everything there for a gag. Moffat is the prince of this kind of overcalculated comedy, and the little-remembered Joking Apart is his finest (half-)hour.
Some idea of this show’s claustrophobic reflexivity can be judged from its premise - it was about a comedy writer whose marriage was in the process of falling apart (’Joking Apart’, geddit?). The first episode started with him trying to find the perfect end line to an episode of his show. The payoff is him finding the line and saying it aloud: an act which effectively ends his marriage.
Trying to summarise the damn thing illustrates something curious about this style of comedy: it’s irreducible. I mean, the whole thing is a trivial irrelevance, but if you try to explain it, you find it’s almost impossible without explaining every gag, every line. There is no plot outside the payoffs.
Oh, and of course, everything centres around those British comedic tropes of sex and the fear of humiliation, which itself inevitably leads to humiliation. As one guide succinctly indicates, the elements of a typical episode were “Women in rooms”.
On reflection, “Women in rooms” a perfectly adequate plot description of about 50% of British comedy.
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11.07.03
Posted in Bloggery at 4:05 pm by
I very nearly ignored this blog’s birthday today. I wasn’t looking out for it.
I’m staggered that Rogue Semiotics is a year old. And yet, at the same time, I feel as though I’ve been blogging for ever.
The reality is that, although I don’t post every day, and almost never at weekends, I’ve still racked up some 387 posts over the year. That’s nearly 1.5 per working day. I must be more assiduous than I thought.
I’m certainly not going to produce an anniversary edition or an index, as some Geezers I know would, but I thought I’d quickly revisit twenty of my favourite moments from the year. Please bear with me.
- Syllogisms and dark forces at work on day one
- Meaning of ‘rereviewed’, ignoring the
- The House on the Rock
- Is the brain patterned after nature?
- Ergodic literature
- Our Reasonable Media (one of many similar posts)
- The Visiblog experiment
- My PC has Artificial Intelligence (I’d completely forgotten this, and it made me laugh)
- On the river (about as autobiographical as I get)
- Luggarato (to prove I can be a soppy old dozer, too)
- In which we celebrate the arrival of The Deep North
- Storm over Asia (Tuvan throat-singers Yat-kha perform a live soundtrack to a half-forgotten Soviet film) (for more Tuvan obssessiveness, try this archive)
- Moved to tears by a documentary about flowers
- “It’s easy to forget how much time we straddle”
- Trying (and failing) to watch Tarkovsky
- Roman a clef (took me a while and some proper research, that one)
- My coffee tin
- Sports journalism and nostalgia
- ASYLUM SEEKERS WILL COVER LONDON BY 2005
- A new word for the dictionary
Normal service again after the weekend and, I hope, the test to which I darkly alluded not so long ago.
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Posted in Meeja at 12:56 pm by
After a couple of years in which my magazine reading and subscriptions have been whittled down to almost nothing, I’m starting to see some new periodicals I might actually wish to read.
I signed up for the prelaunch issue of The London News Review, and it was promising in patches, if not yet something I would await every month.
I’ll also be sampling another London magazine, Smoke, though it looks as though it’ll have to wait until I next visit the Tate Modern to grab a copy.
Strange Attractor catches my eye for other reasons, although I have to admit that I’m really looking forward to an article in the first issue on “Imaginary Cults of London”. On the other hand, a threatened article on “Hidden Ciphers in Great Literature” sounds ominously like Bible Code-type madness.
Finally, Maps and Territories is a sweet idea for a weblog. Each post is based on a map or map extract attached. I’ll be returning here.
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11.06.03
Posted in London at 12:57 pm by
The South London Press headline boards rarely let you down. This week it’s “Become Lord of the Manor for 50k”, although it’s not clear from this whether it’s a scandal or a special offer.
Mind you, 50 grand for a mere squireship seems a little steep. For more economical ways of acquiring titles, I think we need to visit The Deep North.
I wonder if the Sarflunnenpress headline is the first recorded London use of “manor” in its older sense of the new century? Unless, of course, it’s talking about buying the services of a lumpen eared crew in a white transit so as you can really boss it about your manor, guv.
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11.05.03
Posted in Dreaming of England at 12:18 pm by
Since we are having an nostalgic autumn of wildcat strikes and pay disputes, I thought I’d dig out one of William Morris’ least starry-eyed ditties for the workers, electronically transcribed and released into the public domain by that marvellous creation, Project Gutenberg.
DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN
Come, comrades, come, your glasses clink;
Up with your hands a health to drink,
The health of all that workers be,
In every land, on every sea.
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!
Well done! now drink another toast,
And pledge the gath’ring of the host,
The people armed in brain and hand,
To claim their rights in every land.
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!
There’s liquor left; come, let’s be kind,
And drink the rich a better mind,
That when we knock upon the door,
They may be off and say no more.
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!
Now, comrades, let the glass blush red,
Drink we the unforgotten dead
That did their deeds and went away,
Before the bright sun brought the day.
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!
The Day? Ah, friends, late grows the night;
Drink to the glimmering spark of light,
The herald of the joy to be,
The battle-torch of thee and me!
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!
Take yet another cup in hand
And drink in hope our little band;
Drink strife in hope while lasteth breath,
And brotherhood in life and death;
And he that will this health deny,
Down among the dead men, down among the dead men,
Down, down, down, down,
Down among the dead men let him lie!
(From Chants for Socialists by William Morris)
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11.03.03
Posted in Flotsam at 3:51 pm by
I haven’t posted anything about my recent holiday, particularly the flights, partly because I have yet to write an appropriately icy letter to the airline concerned asking for compensation. It’s fortunate that the holiday itself was excellent, wonderful, just what the doctor ordered, &c.
But there is something interesting about the journey. At about 4pm Sunday last our plane took off from a European country (part of the EU, in fact) and landed in the same country at 7am the next morning (Monday). It was a direct flight.
Where were we flying from - and to where?
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Posted in Flotsam at 3:18 pm by
So must icier ego reinvent itself
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