They buried my father today, and it was OK. Well. It was a lot better than I feared, but probably worse than he feared. His fears no longer matter. That’s the thing about funerals. They are perhaps the only one of life’s rituals that matter not one bit to the central person. Funerals are for the living.

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So here’s the spooky story, continued. It was supposed to be just a walk. In fact, I had joked with friends about the North American habit of calling an English “walk” a “hike”. But we were both wrong. It was more than a walk. And it was quite a hike. I created a set of photos on Flickr, and...

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On Saturday night, I finished reading David Denby’s article in the latest New Yorker, on the transformation of cinema viewing, and fell asleep. On Sunday night, with supper, I picked up where I left off, with a newly published Primo Levi story called Bear Meat. Spooky to the max, as we used to say...

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That’s what I keep telling myself; don’t delay. If you have something to blog about, blog about it. But life gets in the way. So my high-minded thoughts on the whole “is cloned meat safe to eat” heat have been put aside in favour of Safe as milk?, an editorial in the New York Times.

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Tell me Mercury isn’t checking his cellphone to see whether anyone has sent him an SMS? One of the great things about Washington DC is just how much free art is available. (I think I’ve blogged about this before, but I’m blowed if I can find the post.) Anyway, that means one can pop in and out of g...

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