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Blogging the agenda: agenda-ing the blog
I have been writing in a variety of fora for quite some time now but this blog is a new venture for me. It will be as much a scrap book of current interests as anything else. I have felt for some time...
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An afternoon in Tolkien's footsteps
We spent some time this afternoon at Sarehole Mill Museum a few miles outside Birmingham city centre. On the face of it, there is nothing really special about the place: an untidy carpark, a few old...
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First day of the holiday today ...
.... so, thanks to my daughter for waking us up at 4am! But what to do? We are - to use that appalling portmanteau - having a 'staycation' and will head for town later to potter in the shops and munch...
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Focal things and practices
Dr John SeniorI suppose there is a romantic in all of us in one way or another; we are all irreducible individuals. I am not, however, what I would call a romantic, at least not by training. Using such...
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The wobbly Olympic scenery
The London Olympics opening ceremonyMy wife and I stayed up late on Friday night to see on TV the opening of the Olympic Games 2012 in London. I'm not an enthusiast of these kinds of occasions, but I...
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If a thing's worth doing ...
... it's worth doing badly. That at least was the opinion of G. K. Chesterton. This is no wilfully perverse paradox, although it is a paradox. I think what he meant was that even if you do something...
View ArticleOlympian dreams
I said some harsh words about the Olympic opening ceremony a week ago. But I'm not for a minute one of the disgusted moaners who were featured on the BBC Radio 4's Today programme yesterday. I'm...
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Richard Wilbur
A recent concatenation of circumstances too lengthy to explain brought before my eyes once more the name of the American poet Richard Wilbur about whom I have not thought in a long time. I used to have...
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Baking well
I have spent considerable time this week on a short chapter for a book about island foods. I saw the call for contributors some time ago, and reflecting on the fact that Britain too is an island, I...
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Too damn busy ...
... that's my excuse. What's yours?But, seriously, folks, I promised pictures of the various Bakewell pudding disasters last week and here they now are. Read on at your peril ... The first four...
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Of clocks and cars
I'm currently reading Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilisation, the first major study in English of the long history of technology in the West, published in 1934. By an odd coincidence the...
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Of time and space
The second half of August proved to be busier than expected, hence the hiatus in blogging. Academics generally take one of two attitudes to the summer: do nothing so as to recover from last year's...
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The Pleasures of a Late Summer
If I've not been the near the blog this week, it's because I've been enjoying myself too much to jot down anything resembling ordered thoughts. I won't say life in Birmingham is always as sparkling as...
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Liaisons dangereuses
My daughter is now at the age where everything is ripe for investigation, tasting, testing and exploration. Long gone are the days when you could safely deposit her on the bed, sort out the washing and...
View ArticleA fragment and a ruin
The last three weeks have been spent in a blur of work. It has been what we call preciously la rentrée (it sounds so much better that 'back to school'). I've been something of a fragment and ruin...
View ArticleLinked-In
My friend and colleague Professor Paul Scott has just opened a blog at Cufflink Catholic.Paul has been displaying a series of cufflink shots on Facebook for some months now, and it was only a matter of...
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It's Christmas time
... so what better reason to potter back to my old haunts and hang out for a while? Since late October, when I last blogged, I confess to a mixture of overwhelming work and solid disinterest in...
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What goes around comes around ...
... and I've been around a bit since last I blogged!Is there anybody there? said the blogger, Looking at his flatlined stats;And his blog in the silence whirred awayLike Eliots's purring cats.This blog...
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Silence is golden
I have on the coffee table beside my chair Georges Duhamel's Querelles de famille. It is a patchwork quilt of a book in which Duhamel, a now largely forgotten French novelist and essayist, sets out his...
View ArticleTime stands still
One thing we have learned about having twins is that there are times when the clock just defeats you. I say the clock; perhaps I should say the revolution of the earth (if you believe in that sort of...
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