I came to The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old expecting the sort of gentle chuckle one lets out when a pensioner mistakes TikTok for a foot ointment. What I found instead was a revelation - less a book, more a quietly defiant act of civil disobedience, written in biro. If Alan Bennett’s … Continue reading A Cacophony of Creaks and Courage: On the Curious Brilliance of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old
A Soleful Misuse of Public Services: In Praise of the Cheesy-Footed Charlatan of Worthing
There are times in life when one must stop, take stock, and wonder if civilisation has, quite simply, had its day. That moment arrived for me this week in the form of a gentleman - and I use the term in its loosest, most elasticated sense - by the name of Richard Cove. A man … Continue reading A Soleful Misuse of Public Services: In Praise of the Cheesy-Footed Charlatan of Worthing
A Wizard’s Dream, or: Why My Toaster Is Probably a Portal
There are days - usually Tuesdays, always drizzly - when I suspect I’ve fallen out of time. I don’t mean in the Romantic sense, like I’ve become a flâneur of yesteryear, drinking absinthe with Baudelaire while watching Victorian dogs bark in sepia. No, I mean I’m quite literally out of step with whatever this “present” … Continue reading A Wizard’s Dream, or: Why My Toaster Is Probably a Portal
“People Ruin Beautiful Things”: On Gibran, Secrecy, and the Sacred Art of Keeping Quiet
“Travel and tell no one, Live a true love story and tell no one, Live happily and tell no one - People ruin beautiful things.” They say Kahlil Gibran wrote that, and perhaps he did. Then again, the internet says many things: that Einstein married Marilyn Monroe, that Churchill coined every popular meme, and that … Continue reading “People Ruin Beautiful Things”: On Gibran, Secrecy, and the Sacred Art of Keeping Quiet
The Hangover of Civility: Lucky Jim and the War on Pretension
I’ve always felt that the great war following the great war was not the one involving tanks or treaties, but the one fought in corridors of universities, offices, marriages, and pubs - against the dreary empire of pretension. Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim is not so much a novel as a snarl in prose; a bottle … Continue reading The Hangover of Civility: Lucky Jim and the War on Pretension
Wording 