On one of those million and one BBC websites there is a report of this singular phenomenon from the 19th century. The website claimed for a brief time there was a fashion among women to feign a limp in public when there was nothing the matter with them. This was more than a daft fashion… Continue reading These boots are made for… limping
Month: July 2014
Spare the rod
You have to hope this gathering worldwide storm of populism is not a glissando towards Nazi-ism. Sure, there is a quickening in the political pulse. The disconnected nomenklatura and all-too-connected social welfarists demand that the people get to eat cake when there really is no cake. The dispossessed gather in tribal clans to do harm.… Continue reading Spare the rod
Graffiti in church
Nowadays English parish churches are quaint, underused decorative motifs for period costume dramas and Kodak moments — but it seems that they weren’t always that way. Fascinating research that is at a very early stage of data gathering seems to point to a completely different role for the medieval church. The middle class Georgians and… Continue reading Graffiti in church
‘And you try and tell the young people of today that… they won’t believe you’
PriceWaterhouseCoopers the accounting firm with corporate offices in every major city in the world, has mercifully begun calling itself PwC. It has had a bit of a track record with name changes as it swallowed more rivals over the years than the greenery in Little Shop of Horrors. But if you wanted to deal with… Continue reading ‘And you try and tell the young people of today that… they won’t believe you’
Local newspapers have a death wish
On British local newspapers, traditionally that time-honoured apprenticeship of newsgathering, ill-fitted Fleet Street tricks are being aped. You can see this for yourself in headline language used to “big up” a story. “Council boss hits out over bins horror”, “Attendance at village fete plunges”, “Pensioner anguish over dead squirrel”, “Government cuts threaten charity panto”; you… Continue reading Local newspapers have a death wish
You Talkin’ to Me…?
The message that the past really is another country for which you have got nothing but a visitor’s visa is rammed home when you read this. (Click on the image). Crimes of passion have been happening since the Neanderthals. Domestic disputes boil over on a hot night when someone takes a knife from the… Continue reading You Talkin’ to Me…?
If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
Almost everyone has heard of the Crystal Palace. The better informed would tell you that it was the inspiration of Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, as a place designed to hold the Great Exhibition of 1851. They would maybe add that it was later moved to Sydenham in south east London to a site on… Continue reading If you build it, they won’t necessarily come
There should be a name for…
Shakespeare made up words. Now it’s your turn. There ought to be a name for… The tuft of hair that sticks from the back of a baseball cap The diablo of pleasure, then mild boredom, trounced by guilty remorse that occurs between the first spoonful of ice cream and the last scrape from the bottom… Continue reading There should be a name for…