Contact

Archives for: "January 2022"

Black angel

Sat 29th January 2022

I've been looking through the List of Missing Words, a pdf addendum to the most recent edition of Chambers which I am buying for me and Mel in the interests of non-marital harmony, as it rankles with me that Mel disallowed "abime" and "hap" in a recent… more »

10 comments »

Not for the first time, I find someone's wife attractive

Wed 19th January 2022

Me and Mel got the lergy at the same time I think. Her Aussie friends were over two Saturdays ago. Kev had procured these cannabis sweets which mimic, at least in flavour and appearance, those bittersweet rubbery snakes of English childhood. I was in a… more »

8 comments »

I leave my family's Christmas presents on a train

Mon 10th January 2022

To Lancaster for Christmas. I worked for hours to get the fare down to £33. Coach to Birmingham, dodge the train as far as Stoke-on-Trent, single to Alsager but stay on till Crewe, single to Preston, dodge it from Preston. On the last leg, a masked… more »

8 comments »

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

M / 60 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.

There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

Contact | Help | Blog skin by Asevo | Multiple blogs solution

Archives for: "January 2022"

Black angel

Not for the first time, I find someone's wife attractive

I leave my family's Christmas presents on a train

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person

Rummage in my drawers

The Comfort of Strangers

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

XML Feeds