Imagine that you are walking past a lonely graveyard at night, when you hear a terrifying shriek, improbably smell garlic or blood, and see white things flitting about. You run home as fast as you can, lock the door, and then start to wonder. What...
The other day I decided to buy fruit and vegetables, not at the supermarket, but at the local independent greengrocer and fishmonger that has stood on Beeston High St for over a century. It is a friendly and excellent local institution (pretty advanced in non-use...
Some people, mostly English, think it’s very important to say that Parliament is absolutely sovereign. But “the principle of unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle and has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.” So said the President of the Inner House of the...
An actor called Paul Darrow, "science fiction icon", died this week. This set me off on an obscure trip down memory lane, and in particular to an evening long ago in my grandparents’ spare bedroom, which I spent learning some of DG Rossetti’s poem “Sister Helen.”...
(No volunteers to review "Endgame"?) A few more miscellaneous thoughts from the returned tourist: Bowing. Yes, people do bow, especially to their customers. I did see two elderly women, friends, bowing repeatedly to each other when saying goodbye, but on the whole the bowing didn't look awkward...
In the book of Genesis, Jacob is a patriarch, father of twelve sons, who are the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel. He also had a daughter, Dinah, whose story (Genesis chapter 34) is not often preached on. She was visiting some local female...
I am even more conscious than usual that I am writing from a position of almost total ignorance. Before leaving this country for a holiday in Japan, I read one book of history, and looked up Shinto on Wikipedia. I then spent two weeks looking at...
So, we’re back, and during our absence Notre Dame burned and 350+ people were murdered in Sri Lanka, but the UK didn’t leave the EU. Our trip to Japan was fascinating in many ways. It was partly a visit to see family, but then morphed by...
The Blogger is leaving on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to the Far East (Japan), so there will be no posts on 12th, 19th or 26th April. Just in case any of my readers is connected to the criminal underworld, I should point out that we are not...
I know we're all obsessing about Brexit at the moment. But here is something completely different. If I asked my readers what they knew about King Richard III, I suspect the answer would be something like this: “He was the last king of England before the...