"Incontinence?"

"Tears."

Peccavi.

The Peterseliebuurt district wasn't one of the city's hotspots. Built as a quick adjunct to the City in response to an influx of immigrants, largely Dutch, it clung to maps of the city like a scarred, oil-stained limpet. Centuries had passed since then, and the immigrants had slowly moved out and up, taking with them any chance of gentrification ( Read more... )

The BBC allegedly believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish, strikethrough the ones you didn't like.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - ( Read more... )

( NSFW and Long )

No sleep, no rest, no food, just the path. That, and that alone was the rule. While he walked, he had no name and no home. Any man who sheltered would be struck until he bled from every pore, any child who fed would have its hand broken, and any woman who smiled at him would be stoned for one half of an hour. As it was inevitable that any of ( Read more... )

Christmas is this: the sound of bells from up the road, calling in the Anglicans, the scent of a big roast, seasoned, stuffed and baconed to glory, rising up the stairs, the sight of clear, empty cobbles in the heart of town, the feel of paper sliding away from smooth, untouched surfaces of long-anticipated gifts, and the sweetening, sugary taste ( Read more... )

I have Officially Not Wasted the last year of my life! (Dissertation was a touch crap, but woo nonetheless!)

-Yrs Sincerely, Thomas Stanbury, M.A.

Every year, people flood to the place. They come to study, to work, to see the golden walls, to see Wren's dome, to peer at the Dodo's foot, or Cromwell's death mask, or Fawkes' lantern. To these, Oxford is the quintessentially charming, inoffensive English town, if somewhat bereft of tea rooms. Most, however, will pass by or glance with ( Read more... )

It was never going to be Nighthawks. For one, the glass panes that made up the long windows were small and frequently shattered by stones thrown by passing children. Outside, the varicoloured neon of the neighbourhood flanked it on all sides while the flickering streetlights blazed down, stripping the joint of any pretension of being an island of ( Read more... )