For the past few weeks, the weather in London has been – what the Irish would describe as – “desperate.” Making my way to the work, a few soggy mornings ago, I caught glance of this shop front and despite the soaked and depressing concrete grays of the city at this time of year, it…
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Harry Potter, Famous Dads and Stoke Newington
After two-and-just-under-a-quarter years, I have finally bid farewell to my pokey box room flat in Acton, West London, and moved into an altogether different pokey box room in the bohemian neighbourhood of Stoke Newington, North East London. The move coincides with my recent finishing of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus Infinite Jest (a book that has single…
Why Even Bother
Without trying to come across as too pompous – yet doing just that – I would like to share a section from the introduction to a “Condensation of Animal Farm” published by World Digest in January 1946 and in reference to the writings of George Orwell. It goes a little like this: (Mr Orwell) does not hesitate to criticize…
The Best Book I Never Read
Killing time while waiting for a friend the other day, I saw this book on sale in a West London charity shop. Though on sale at a bargain £1, I didn’t pick it up. Something I may regret for years to come. I did, however, take a snap of the front cover because it is…
A Bit of Political Rap
It’s no secret that I hold George Orwell’s writing in the highest of regard (this blog is named after a column that he wrote between 1943 and 1947 for the British left-wing newspaper Tribune). Over the last 2 years, I have read just about every word the man ever put to paper – as to be…
Chupa Chups
I just found out that the logo for Chupa Chups lollies was designed by Salvador Dali. I’m not sure exactly what can be done with this information but I had to share it.
A Billion in the Bank
Every day for the last year, I have bought the exact same £100,000-prize-scratch-card. With the exception of a few small wins (my largest was £10), as yet, I haven’t struck it rich. It is now getting to the point whereby I am no longer buying the tickets with the hope of winning the jackpot but…
Back in London
I returned to London after spending my Christmas in Bristol. Walking to Westminster Station, I took this quick picture of the Abbey with my phone. Such an incredible building. Follow my blog with Bloglovin
The Quick and the Pointless
It is a curious thing that you are now just as likely to find a copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road in a second-hand bookshop as you are to find a copy of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It reminds me of the comedian Stewart Lee’s joke that, considering the current condition of the literary world, the…
Insert End of an Era Cliché Here
I was in White City earlier this week and took a stroll by the building previously known as BBC Television Centre. With the vacant office lights off and the complex’s main entrance barricaded shut, I was put in mind of the occasion I visited the disused ship manufacturing district in Belfast City (referred to by…
Looking back on Galway
In the initial months of the Irish economic collapse, I lived like a down-and-out amongst the bohemians of Galway City. My hair was long, my clothes were scruffy and I had no greater aspirations in life above funding my next meal. As if things couldn’t get any worse, I joined a writing group. While, as a collective, the group…
Traveling better with Tubiquette
Even at the best of times, riding the Tube can be a labored and infuriating experience. And it’s not even the delays, cramped carriages or bronchiole clogging tunnels that’ll drive an otherwise sane person to screaming at non-English-speaking strangers, but more a confluence of small, regularly occurring, irritations; tourists standing on the left side of…
The Charming Irrelevance of Russell Brand
Last night, I watched uncomfortably as Russell Brand ranted at Jeremy Paxman on BBC’s Newsnight. Coming across more as a disaffected first-year-undergraduate-soc-and-pol-student than any sort of credible political commentator, Brand demonstrated not only an unsettling propensity towards demagoguery, but to be the most frustrating kind of citizen. That is, one that doesn’t vote. In fact,…
The Hard Brass Backbone of Bristol
It is perhaps quite fitting that the ugliest part of Bristol’s city centre is its high-street Shopping Quarter. I cannot recall ever being in a district so under-representative of its host city as Bristol’s shopping quarter. Combining faceless high-street retail brands and desperately ugly, mid-20th century architecture , the shopping quarter is a ghetto of charmless consumerism to…