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Why arnt childrun being tort how 2 rite? I recently received this interesting example of written English. It is a letter to the customers of a hotel car park in Norfolk. The names have been changed, but not the text. more...
Feature on Psychics, Woman’s Journal, 1994 When you spend any time in the company of clairvoyants, you realise there are certain things it is wise not to mention. For example, it is tactless to do the psychic “knock-knock” joke (“Who’s there?” “Knock, knock”), despite this splendid little reversal’s perennial appeal. Psychics also get tired of clever-dicks asking why there needs to be a newspaper called Psychic News (“Don’t you know the news already?”) and they certainly get defensive when you ask why spirit guides invariably sport such exotic old-soul monickers as Silver Birch, Mister Ming and Omar. more...
The House of Eliott There are those who pooh-pooh The House of Eliott. When you mention that you will be snuggling down for an entire weekend in a darkened room with Series Two on DVD and a box of chocs, they automatically remind you of the French and Saunders parody “The House of Idiot” – which featured, as I recall, Kathy Burke as a cockney seamstress with an outsized pain au raisin attached to each side of her head, like earmuffs. more...
Sisters of Salome If you were to cast about for the worst possible role model for the emancipation of women, you would feel you had hit the jackpot when you thought of Salome. For what is this hot little virgin’s story? more...
Studs Terkel In newspaper profiles connected with his new book, the legendary 89-year-old oral historian Studs Terkel has marvelled at how easy it was. “They say nobody wants to talk about death. Let me tell ya: everybody wants to talk about it!” more...
P.G Wodehouse A sandless bunker on a golf course near Croydon might seem like an unlikely site for a pilgrimage on a wet Tuesday in May, but if you are a worshipful fan of the great P.G. Wodehouse celebrating the republication of his books by Penguin, it is nothing short of the real tabasco. more...
Rocket Dreams Although Marina Benjamin does not specifically mention that red-letter year 2001, what a swizz it turned out to be, really. Some of us will never recover from the let-down; will never quite forgive Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke for raising too high a level of expectation about mankind’s unstoppable expansion into space. Were we fools to think that, 30 years after the Apollo landings, Pan-Am would be flying routinely to the Moon? Three decades seemed more than enough time to get that one sorted. I always wanted to be one of those space-shuttle flight attendants in the powder-blue jumpsuits and the funny marshmallow-shaped hats. I would have volunteered to sew Velcro on the soles of my soft white flatties, and everything.more...
Book review: Running with Scissors Two scruffy teenagers in the grip of common teenage ennui are sharing McNuggets at a red plastic table in Northampton, Massachusetts. The date is some time in the 1970s -- but it might be any boy, any girl, any time. Except for the details of the conversation. Because the girl, Natalie, has a realization. more...
Book review: The British Seaside It is hard to describe quite how one’s heart sinks at the phrase “the excitements of liminality” the first time one comes across it. A book about the seaside in the 20th century promises so much in the way of narrative and fun. more...
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