Herself pointed out this tile on a wall near Chiswick Park Station. We got a kick out of it and hope you will too.
Tag: Writing
Feminist campaigners welcome plans for the installation of North Korea’s first female despot.
North Korea, the controversial East Asian state, plans to install its first female supreme leader, delighting the legion of feminist critics who branded the previous regime as sexist, offensive and anachronistic. “This comes from high up, from the top,” said one source in reference to the decision. While no official statement has yet been released from…
McDonald’s newest branch in Hong Kong totally looks like something from George Orwell’s 1984
In an effort to improve their reputation as a “modern and progressive” organization, McDonald’s recently opened the first of its new “high-tech” branches in Hong Kong. As well as allowing customers to order their meals via touch-screen kiosks, the McDonald’s Next restaurant features a salad bar to cater to more health conscious diners. New items…
Cooking George Orwell’s Long Lost Kidney Stew Recipe
On the day following King George V’s Silver Jubilee celebrations, 6th May 1935, George Orwell took a break from writing A Clergyman’s Daughter to type a letter to his friend and one-time romantic interest, Brenda Salkeld. Among Orwell’s usual topics of discussion (politics, literature, and low-culture) the author outlined what he described as a “wonderful” ox-kidney…
I am an Emperor
Simon & Garfunkel sang in The Sound of Silence that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.” I don’t know much about all that, but I happened upon this poem chalked onto the boarded up window of a condemned building on Camden High Street this afternoon. The grammar certainly leaves a…
The Romans and the Moralists
I am half way through rereading Augustus, a suberb novel by John Williams, author of the equally brilliant Stoner and Butcher’s Crossing, and noticed this particularly eloquent passage that I had overlooked the first time through. The quote is taken from a fictionalised 12BC letter from the political advisor Gaius Cilnius Maecenas to Titus Livius and…
A Long Walk Through The City
Soon we found ourselves in Bloomsbury where around every corner you half expect to find T.S Eliot or Virginia Woolf stood in discussion with one of their literary acquaintances from that little bourgeois social circle of theirs. When Americans see London in their movies, says my old man, this is the London they are seeing.
A Greek Easter in London
The Greek Orthodox Church celebrate their Easter a week after the rest of us Roman Catholic types. They call it Pascha and see it as the most important holiday of the year – more important even than Christmas. Herself is as Greek as they come, so last Saturday night, she took us to St. Sophia’s…
As If I Wasn’t Busy Enough, Now I Have Multiple Sclerosis
“Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well.” Nicholas Bolkonski in Tolstoy’s War and Peace With the appointment confirmation letter neatly folded into the breast pocket of my winter coat, I arrive ten minutes early at the…
Under Pressure
The bookshelf above my bed is now beyond overloaded and I’m quite certain that it’s going to collapse any day now. We’re at breaking point. One of the screws on the bottom left corner is looking particularly dodgy, and despite my best efforts I can’t get the damn thing tightened back into the wall. I…
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…