With apologies in advance to old & valued clients, we may be neglecting the blog for a while. Our beloved friend the Papyrologist has died in complex and difficult circumstances. There’s nothing to say, really, except that it was far too soon. But I was searching around on the Web (seeing if I could find […]
We have just spent a few days in the South – Midlands, then Yorkshire, seeing lots and lots of old friends. One of whom, whom we were staying with, had something very odd in her bathroom – a sachet which contained, it said, ‘Plain Shampoo for Normal Hair’. Well, there’s a thing. It has […]
The Rogue Semiotician has been talking about diaries. I have never kept one in the classic sense of owning a narrative book, preferably with a lock, ‘Dear Diary, I woke this morning to understand yet more fully the extent to which I am misunderstood…’. I think Miss Dog has one of those, in which, doubtless, […]
There was a curious moment the other day: I was walking Miss Dog up to the new neighbours’ and was I suppose a couple of hundred yards up the track when I heard an almighty BANG – CRASH – TINKLE which sounded extremely proximate, and paused irresolutely. Hum, I thought, hope they’re all all right, […]
Suddenly it’s autumn, even though the leaves have not yet turned: cool, but with brilliant blue skies and the sound of roaring harvesters carried on the air. The texture of the air is different; drier, fresher: late August is miasmatic, but all that’s gone now. I’m just waiting for the first person to say ‘the […]
I was sitting up in the Professor’s study harmlessly emailing about the place when there was a tremendous outbreak of scuttering from downstairs. Aha, I thought. Miss New Best Friend has turned up, and they are playing a tremendous Silly Bitch game of ‘run round and round the house in figures of eight until we’re […]
The internet is a wonderful thing. I recently found out that there’s another manuscript of something I’m editing, and it’s in Dordrecht in the local archive. Nothing at all swift could be done about it by way of generating a microfilm and the piece is overdue already –– but eventually it struck us that the […]