tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-95019382009-11-11T22:46:31.628ZThe stiffest upper lip on the netBrithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.comBlogger701125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-71540543765115511812009-11-11T09:51:00.004Z2009-11-11T14:21:12.529Z

Does anyone else feel they’re being diddled out of their rightful allocation of Time?I refer, of course, to rubbish television programmes. Mostly these are scheduled to last an hour. On commercial channels fifteen minutes of this hour is ads, fair enough. But much more insidious is the sneaky format of virtually all reality/lifestyle/documentary-type shows, whether its Four Nasty Buggers Cook

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-26855702698675690562009-11-10T13:43:00.002Z2009-11-10T13:48:20.178Z

I hope this isn’t too late to be entered into the Appleyard/Alsop architectural competition.Inspired by Gaw’s account of the ossuary of Hythe Church, and mindful of the requirement that the building be ‘multi-purpose’, I noticed a gap in the market for some sort of mausoleum which also offers high-quality dining featuring locally-sourced organic produce. After intensive focus-grouping, I rejected

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-16310252447835132362009-11-10T08:00:00.000Z2009-11-10T08:57:00.782Z

In fact, that Heinz Tomato Soup - the finest of all tomatoey manifestations (and I am prepared to support that assertion with graphs, surveys and, if necessary, a surprising amount of physical violence) - is not even mentioned at the Guernsey Tomato Museum is indicative of the paucity of that attraction.I suspected that the meh list would cause a stir, and hesitated a moment before including "

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-123729291020122372009-11-09T07:57:00.004Z2009-11-09T07:57:00.304Z

... a bit 'meh' these days, no? Overexposure I expect. Even at the most extravagant display, five minutes is enough, isn't it?I mean, I know lots of other things are a bit meh, such as A Question of Sport, Starbucks, religion vs atheism, most soups, the M6, jugglers, The X Factor, misconceived critiques of The X Factor, tennis, interest rates on savings, meerkats, the Government, poetry,

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-33787350711244862602009-11-08T07:53:00.001Z2009-11-08T07:54:50.439Z

It's always worth reading this, at least once a year anyway.

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-5883906135878691272009-11-06T09:02:00.004Z2009-11-06T09:49:34.080Z

So the next day, a Friday, braced and full of beans after Thursday’s thrilling blackberry-scrumping adventure in which I had unequivocally stuck it to The Man, I took a northward lane up the hill towards Lansdown.By and by I happened upon the gate depicted below. I leaned there and gazed out across the valley.The above picture deceives by flattening the hill. In reality, the gradient is fairly

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-55813671209513074422009-11-05T12:23:00.001Z2009-11-05T14:07:00.703Z

This is a tale of thrilling recklessness. Last Thursday my lunchtime stroll took me, almost against my will, along lanes eastwards, eastwards, past the llama farm, down hill and up. In this direction lie the best blackberry bushes, though the season is on its knees and few edible specimens remain, just the odd over-soggy bloater or, saddest of all, the shrivelled black geriatrics, spent on the

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-79466288142174629072009-11-04T09:05:00.001Z2009-11-04T09:08:35.116Z

By some distance the least impressive museum I have ever visited is the Tomato Museum on the island of Guernsey (mind you I haven’t yet been to Barometer World in Okehampton but some day, just you mark my words, I will).I think I was about fourteen when we went, so you can imagine the impression a tomato-based attraction would have made on my adolescent mind. That’s right, none whatsoever. I don’

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-69224465227110091332009-11-03T10:41:00.001Z2009-11-03T10:45:51.578Z

Did anyone else read Robert Harris giving Gyles Brandreth an absolute kicking in The Sunday Times, and think, Woah, steady on, Bob. What’s Gyles ever done to you? This is like punching Paddington Bear, or strangling Sooty. Surely there are more worthy candidates for a coldblooded character assassination than this harmless old hack, whose sole and modest ambition in life has been to give people

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-42164927522567886732009-11-03T09:03:00.000Z2009-11-03T09:05:28.451Z

This occurred to me just over 12 weeks ago, and has re-occurred faintly since.For those of you with offspring, when you found yourself in the dizzy environment of the delivery suite for the first time, did you get the unsettling feeling that all other activities and careers going on in the outside world, including yours, were trivial, even a bit silly, and that midwives and other related medicos

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-22862662298675903412009-11-02T09:54:00.004Z2009-11-03T10:53:51.613Z

A nice piece in the Guardian here about the fact that Andre Agassi hated tennis.It appeals to me, the somewhat tragic aspect of the sportsman who hates the only thing he can do. Other examples that spring to mind are Stan Collymore (football) and Chris Eubank (who used to regularly profess his loathing of boxing, but as with so much about the man, it was hard to tell to what extent this was a

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-3501934595923215962009-10-31T17:12:00.000Z2009-10-31T17:14:20.699Z

... from the archives.

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-49033989739523703852009-10-30T11:00:00.004Z2009-10-30T11:05:32.194Z

The Arnolfini art gallery, of which I have been but am not currently a patron (despite its excellent bar), emails me with news of an exciting event in its season C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture:The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home - two adults and three children - proposes a holiday for autumn half-term. …Accompanied by eco-Au Pair Branka Cvjeticanin, they will set

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-73446711329679475562009-10-30T09:46:00.005Z2009-10-30T10:09:19.369Z

Do you remember Jane Elliott? She was that terrifying teacher who divided her all-white class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed children to illustrate what it was like to be on the receiving end of racial discrimination. It was powerful stuff, almost unwatchable.That famous progamme was made in Iowa in 1968. Amazingly, Elliott is still doing exactly the same thing forty years later. Last night

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-74038386672758617042009-10-29T10:32:00.004Z2009-10-29T10:40:34.754Z

Here’s another good game for imposing simplified Platonic categories onto the chaotic mass of humanity: work types. I’ve carefully avoided business management books as best I can throughout my career, so I expect this has already been written about many times, but two broad categories of worker I’ve noticed are tortoises and hares.It’s obvious enough: tortoises fill the 9 to 5 day with a steady,

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-2349829934883905792009-10-28T11:09:00.003Z2009-10-28T13:26:48.358Z

Feeling a mite rootless, I wandered yesterday up the usual lunchtime lanes. It was a beautiful sunny autumnal day.“What a beautiful sunny autumnal day it is,” I said to the local character, who was standing alongside his big horse. He agreed that it was. I often encounter this wizened ex-leisure centre manager on the lanes and we always have a chat about how he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-91151092165422827802009-10-28T09:52:00.002Z2009-10-28T09:57:23.781Z

If the Ancestry post was your first contact with the Alarmingly Bushy Family Tree Problem, then I hope it didn’t upset you. I worry about these things sometimes because the ABFTP can leave you feeling rootless. It needn’t, logically, but when has logic ever mattered to human beings?Feeling rootless or otherwise doesn’t really bother me particularly, but for some people, especially those claiming

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-59252755252368953722009-10-27T13:20:00.006Z2009-10-27T13:43:27.315Z

A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress is surely the best title for an autobiography ever. (Thanks Nige).Timothy Dexter's book sounds magnificent:He wrote about himself and complained about politicians, clergy and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but absolutely no punctuation, and capital letters were sprinkled about at random. At first he

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-42785138770835088482009-10-27T10:15:00.004Z2009-10-27T11:02:15.082Z

Perhaps I should point out that I wasn’t trying to be preachy in the Demographic Delusion post below. My aim, as in the Ancestry post, was to write about something that’s hopefully surprising because we don’t often think about it, but which is, when we do think about it, quite obvious. I’m interested in the gap between Platonic thinking and reality. But Platonic thinking - discussing ideal

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-7221275707616398162009-10-26T15:43:00.001Z2009-10-26T15:46:12.729Z

Ahem, I think you'll find Carrie Bradshaw had nothing to do with it.

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-55816514727993564332009-10-26T10:54:00.011Z2009-10-28T09:59:07.844Z

Before 2001 there were a lot of brown-skinned people of Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan extraction living in Britain. The primary objections of Nick Griffin and his equivalents to these people were that they stole our jobs and took over our cornershops and they didn’t support the cricket team. After 9/11 these people disappeared and were replaced by a sinister organisation called ‘

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-53856207808421614172009-10-23T09:32:00.009+01:002009-10-23T16:08:28.935+01:00

So, Nick Griffin on Question Time then. Bit disappointing? Mostly a touch comical, wasn’t it? Aside from one particularly nasty little bit of Kilroy-Silkish Islamophobia (which we’re used to on blogs but still carried a frisson of shock on TV) he came across as a bumbling buffoon. Much less smooth than I expected. That might have been due to the sheer variety of attacks he faced, and because the

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-2898164686451238562009-10-22T14:14:00.002+01:002009-10-22T14:19:47.520+01:00

Excellent, someone has this morning landed here by googling "Black Forest Gateau Cupcake." I hope you enjoy the recipe!Meanwhile, I have absolutely no comment whatsoever to make about this.

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-30858618393562123522009-10-22T10:00:00.003+01:002009-10-22T10:09:48.990+01:00

In Martin Amis’s excellent autobiography Experience (by far his best book) he describes how he is Saul Bellow’s ‘perfect reader’ (and Chris Hitchens, he suggests, is Kingsley’s perfect reader). I think I might be Wes Anderson’s ‘perfect viewer’. The Darjeeling Limited, The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore – I could watch any of them any number of times with a fixed expression of rapt wonderment and

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9501938.post-35952786476770708002009-10-21T14:01:00.006+01:002009-10-21T14:28:14.341+01:00

Ooh aren’t we all jolly well looking forward to the big bunfight on tomorrow’s Question Time? Won’t we all get into a good lather?Nick Cohen links to a set of euphemisms that the BNP commonly uses to disguise its racist policies ("identity" rather than "racial purity" etc), so you could add to your enjoyment of the programme by playing Neo-Nazi Obfuscation Bingo if you wanted.The more I think

Brithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00390560583798960760noreply@blogger.com12