There was a terrific storm in the night, hail rattling the windows, kitten buried beneath duvet, and we woke up to find the world had all gone white again. It’s most tiresome, though by no means unexpected. Fortunately we were not planning to go anywhere. I am drafting Ed, the Professor is incubating a book. […]
A message in my inbox informed me that the Apparitional Gamekeeper had included me among his ‘friends’ on a teen website for sharing photos etc. I was both touched and flattered. Donning my pith helmet &c I ventured forth to investigate the uncharted jungles of uncensored teen-to-teen culture. O dear, o dear, o dear. It […]
The last time the Dramaturg was by, he was singing the praises of a couple of cookbooks emanating from a restaurant called Moro. We bought them, and he was quite right (advt.). One of the things which the Northern Professor rather fancied trying some time was Moroccan flatbread cooked in the ashes of a […]
Are you now, or might you be, within reasonable striking distance of Keswick? ‘by Rolls-Royce, by airplane, by Pullman compartment and for all we know, by specially designed Cartier pogo sticks, the smart art enthusiasts coverged on Keswick …,’ well, as the word Pullman might indicate, I have nicked this from a 30s gossip columnist […]
The Canadian Professor has delighted me by providing me with the perfect patron; St John Nutter, a Lancashire lad martyred under Elizabeth whose dies natalis coincides with my natal day in the other sense of the word. Also of course he is a Johannes and so am I. As for the other element … […]
Cyberspace can cause extraordinarily random expansions in one’s field of knowledge. I’ve just picked up a response to a blog I posted yonks ago on growing giant bamboo called A Taste of the Tropics (by the way, the original giant bamboo to which it referred fell victim to Dr Biswell’s somewhat fallible memory for […]
I was thinking this week about the increasingly evil world of credit cards. This was triggered by a post on the BBC webnews a few days ago which observed that those good citizens who paid their credit cards off in full every month sometimes got caught out, because the CC companies have taken to arbitrarily […]
The late lamented Miss Cat did not do laps. In the course of the day, she would frequently check up on my whereabouts, lean briefly against my legs to let me know she was there, and then take up a post of vantage somewhere such as the printer, and keep an eye on me. […]
One of the things I have been doing as part of the general Burra project is to read the things his friends & acquaintances wrote. Hence my latest discovery, frankly more entertaining than, say, Under the Volcano. Doris Langley Levy was a very charming Jewish bluestocking and great mate of Ed’s — her most […]
The most entertaining bookseller in the country has once again challenged his constituency, as he did last year: this year’s competition was a post-prandial symposium in the manner of Peacock, involving three characters only, less than 500 words, and including precisely ten of 30 possible headings from Southey’s Omniana, with another selected as the […]
Twice before the feeling has obtruded itself that one is inhabiting the first chapter of a suave, old-fashioned thriller. (See The Case of the Bogus Vicar and The Case of the Snowbound Castle.) I have a creeping feeling that it’s starting again.
This last week I have had a swine of a cold and have been […]
We are in hopes of adding a new member to the cast: Honey the Hamster-Loving Hippie. Ever since the sweet, shy farm-wifie who used to look after the house hung up her mop, we have scrambled on as best we might, which given how busy we are, is not very well. Honey the Hippie came […]