Early, apologetic and brief

Hello all. Thank you to those who liked and commented on "The Naming of City." Your comments were extremely characteristic! The book is not nearly finished, Clint. Progress is fairly steady but slow. The current title under consideration is "Naming People and Places." What do you think? In...

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Over- and under-rated

Each week the Guardian Review asks an author a similar set of questions, collectively called “The Books That Made Me.” Some of the authors I’ve even heard of. Two of the categories are: The book I think is most overrated, and The book I think is...

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Rather miscellaneous

So - I was planning to give you a lengthy rant in the form of an anecdote. Yesterday was the Day. The day when some person or algorithm decided it was my turn to be told that my National Insurance number was about to be frozen...

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An apology and a small plan

Dear readers I am afraid this has been a busy week, so no post. Instead I shall copy and paste this poem, which I have more or less decided to learn. What do you think? The Daniel Jazz By Vachel Lindsay Inscribed to Isadora Bennett LET the singer train the audience to...

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Weather

I think it’s in “That Hideous Strength” that CS Lewis introduces a couple who share a liking for “weather” – not “good” weather, but weather in general.  What sensible people, and of course they’re British. In similar vein, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s book “The Victorians” comments on...

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Answers and miscellaneous

I might have posted this week on how pleasant (albeit chilly) it is to eat breakfast at newly-reopened cafés along Beeston High St, but this blog has spent a year trying to keep off the subject of coronavirus, so I won’t. Instead, here is a...

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Quiz for the holidays

It's Good Friday, and perhaps I should give you something spiritual - but you have many other sources for that. So - I love literary quizzes. They come in many topics, but I haven’t seen this one done before. We all know that Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy...

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