[Time warp... I started this post a couple of weeks back and only finished it today - ed] I love the show RadioLab (from W-Y-N …CCCCC!). It’s an hour-long show but I never get to listen to it because I can … Continue reading →

I’ve always thought of automats as lonely, melancholy places. I entered my first automat when I was 14 and visiting the first of many, many navy bases. Naval establishments in those days were almost defined by their automats and automats … Continue reading →

HMS Invincible just sailed off to the scrap yards. Invincible came into service right before I joined up. It was a big deal at the time because Thatcher’s Axe inflicted a series of massive cuts on the armed forces right … Continue reading →

The Name of the Rose is one of those books that I read at an impressionable age and was terribly impressed by it. I read it again a few years later and it was better still. It’s firmly in my … Continue reading →

In one of the universe’s subtle attempts to mess with me, my grandmother died yesterday on the same day that I finished this painting – Girl Seated in a Cemetery by Delacroix. In another week or so, I’ll be standing … Continue reading →

I just started reading James Bach’s Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar. Buccaneer scholar is Bach’s term for someone who takes responsibility for their own education rather than having it handed to them by the authorities. The book is an odd … Continue reading →

I have a very special memory. One that I have not thought about for years but it came to me today in the middle of Saving Private Ryan. I don’t think I’ve shared it before. In my solitude, you haunt … Continue reading →

When I returned from travelling around the world, I took a crappy job fixing avionics on planes at Heathrow Airport. Ooooooooooh how I hated that job. I quit after about three months with no idea of what to do next. … Continue reading →

I bought The Golden Treasury of English Verse and a harmonica as my only mementos of civilization when I set off to go backpacking around the world. I’m not entirely sure why though because I couldn’t play the harmonica and … Continue reading →

I hate internet memes too, but I like this one. List 10(ish) books that had a big influence on your life. Here are Will Wilkinson’s and Conor Friedersdorf’s and Ross Douthat’s. [I started this entry a few weeks ago but … Continue reading →