Hah. One quick boast about longevity and I fall silent for more than a month. I've been away, on holiday, and under lots of work pressure. No excuses, but …
Much has happened; the question is how to relate it. One big post is daunting. Lots of little ones too difficult. And that's a story in itsel...
I know I whine about content. And my reader complains both that some posts are boring and that I don't post often enough. It's because I really don't think the world needs to know about the petty trials and even smaller triumphs of my work life. And how much can one write about lazing at the dog beach by the lake? "There were some fights. And some humping. Dogs and people dozed in the sun." C'mon.
When I haven't posted anything for a while I feel like the great Fimoculous, who had to give up his blog to work on NBC's Olympic web site 1. "I miss my blog more than you do," he said he was thinking of having printed on a T-shirt.
There is something unutterably surreal about having what seems like yards of gauze pulled out of one's nostrils. For a start, who knew there was so much room in there? With only a finger as probe the cavity hardly seems big enough for a pea. Now I understand how mediums of old were able to produce v...
Readers of The Economist will know that there is some disagreement about the Shim Sham, from which Mr Reed developed the Shim Sham Shimmy. Some say it started as a tap routine in the early 1900s; others credit it to the Brains-as-well-as-Feet team.
They don't write obituaries like they used to...
I've been doing this almost every single year for the past, oh, 35 years and it never fails to amaze me. You bung the seeds in to damp compost, you keep them a bit warm and -- Bam! -- new life. Keeping a lid on my impatience can be hard, and in my current set-up is especially dangerous because ther...
