Posted in anniversaries, art, body, cars, children, commerce, cultural, cycles, denmark, design, development, diary, environment, establishment, experience, family, finland, food, language, location, media, nature, occupation, organisations, patriarchy, pedestrian, person, provision, public, sculpture, society, time, tourism, trains, transport on September 5th, 2010 No Comments »
We’ve both just returned from Copenhagen: a conference trip for me, a birthday holiday for K. Denmark is an oddity: much as Finland looks Scandinavian when you squint, Denmark looks a little Germanic when you don’t.
The capital city is wonderful in a lot of ways: it has London’s green lungs, and a brilliant public transport [...]
Posted in belief, cars, cliques, correspondence, cycles, enmity, friends, individual, intuition, lies, mind, morality, opinion, person, psychology, research, safety, society, transport, truth, understanding on August 11th, 2010 2 Comments »
To the editor of Cycle, the CTC magazine:
Sir,
It’s always a shame to see factions of CTC cyclists still arguing with each other over whether one “ought” to either wear, or be forced to wear, a helmet. The argument last in a recent couple of letters pages rears its head so often that the editor might [...]
Posted in art, cliques, death, diary, dreams, emotions, experience, family, friends, music, person, society on August 9th, 2010 No Comments »
Whenever I want to write about Dan—apart from maybe the one obligatory and valedictory post—I worry that I’m leaving myself open to charges of solipsism, or at any rate a slight self-obsession and wallowing in it all. It’s all too easy to turn someone else’s minor misfortune into a story about yourself, but the problem [...]
Posted in body, cliques, commerce, consumers, enmity, food, france, intuition, location, opinion, person, rants, society, tourism, understanding on August 1st, 2010 No Comments »
In the most recent LRB, Stephen Shapin reviews Michael Steinberger’s book about the fall of French cuisine. While Steinberger’s frankly bizarre neoliberal, uncontrollable-market afterwords can probably be discarded, the basic premise—that French cuisine is ossified and tedious—is one with which I can definitely concur.
I’ve suggested before that vegetarian food is a national cuisine’s “canary in [...]
Posted in body, buildings, cliques, consumption, drink, food, france, friends, location, person, society, tourism on July 4th, 2010 2 Comments »
We’re back from what could now start being described as our “yearly vacation in Brittany,” seeing as we’ve done it two years in a row now. K’s parents own a one-time nightmare property which, in its fifteenth or so year of decorating and wrangling-with, has gradually been turned into an idyllic little retreat in the [...]
Posted in amerika, belief, christianity, cliques, enmity, establishment, friends, geography, here, location, love, metaphor, organisations, people, politics, pragmatism, race, responsibility, society, understanding on June 1st, 2010 1 Comment »
My country has no flag. Its has no national anthem, although some of its citizens are partial to folk music and Morris dancing. No seething, populous crowds cheer my country on, with loud or incoherent cries in the street. Its citizens do not rally round meaningless symbols and engineer fake outrage at nonexistent bans, nor [...]
Posted in belief, body, class_warfare, cliques, diary, election, enmity, entertainment, establishment, experience, fatigue, housing, lies, opinion, people, person, philosophy, politics, pragmatism, responsibility, society, understanding on May 10th, 2010 2 Comments »
The dust has yet to settle; yet any election blogpost is already out of date. Other more savvy political commentators than me (and probably ones with more time on their hands) like Obsolete and Anton Vowl have already digested much of the results and have largely pre-empted much of the points I might make.
When I [...]
Posted in charity, cliques, enmity, environment, friends, garden, here, lies, location, loyalty, near, society, understanding on April 30th, 2010 2 Comments »
Our garden share has fallen through, unfortunately. The circumstances are quite complicated to relate, but a précis would go something like this. Our sharer—the elderly woman with a garden—turned out to be simultaneously unwilling to keep in touch and also very demanding, a headily passive-aggressive mix. Last time we spoke a few weeks ago everyting [...]
Posted in art, climate, cliques, commerce, consumption, environment, local_independents, location, manufacture, music, near, recycling, retailers, society on April 19th, 2010 No Comments »
I very gladly took part in Record Store Day this year. Witney might not have much, but it does have one of the very few independent record shops in Oxfordshire, and a real gem at that: Rapture Entertainment. The previous time we lived out here I popped in almost every Saturday: it was a fantastic [...]
Posted in cars, cliques, crime, cycle_accessories, cycles, enmity, opinion, people, rants, responsibility, safety, society, transport on April 10th, 2010 4 Comments »
I’ve mentioned before how much I love my yellow cycling jacket, but seasons change and eventually it becomes time to put away clothes better suited for the wet. The sun has started to show a more regular appearance, and I have a dowdier pacamac which I can stash in my panniers for the times when [...]
