On the jubilant hockey message boards, much talk of the Vancouver Canucks "exercising their demons." I imagine this as a kind of circuit training, with all the poor little demons huffing and puffing as they clamber over obstacles, run laps, lift weights, &c., under the firm whip hand and stern eye of Kevin Bieksa.

"Yes, I know it's 2 o'clock in the morning, but let me just buy you another pintje, because we must discuss the Dreyfus Affair. It's very important. Oh, and would you loan me five euros?"

God, I love living in Europe.

Froissart is so full of great anecdotes, incidents, and quotations. I was inspired to share this one with you just because it's kind of cute and comical, and because it shows that not all knights felt it was always important to stand one's ground against all odds, and not all knights were unforgiving of those who did not stand stoutly to fight. ( Read more... )

I moved here (to my interim apartment at the university) with two suitcases, a backpack, and a laptop case. Winnowed the clothes down all right; glad to have packed my coffee pot; it seemed frivolous at the time. The choice of books was the really agonizing thing ( Read more... )

According to the postcard from him tipped in at the back of my signed copy of Joseph Vance, this is the place where the writer and Arts & Crafts ceramicist William De Morgan was living in Florence in February 1909.

I have been reading the comments on news sites, and find it informative but really discouraging. Every crime report brings out cries of "scum"! as though some people (not us, heaven forbid! always "them") are irredeemable. Many people seem to want to believe this for some reason -- probably because it absolves everyone else of responsibility ( Read more... )

Album which I'd never heard before and can't believe I'd missed it:

Karma Sutra, Daydreams of a Production Line Worker (1987).

Oh, and despite not having read A Tale of Two Cities before, in my reading of the serial just last week I think I have now guessed at Sydney Carton's fate (obviously the residue of having the plot spoiled by references in previous reading over the last thirty years). It's heartbreaking not to be surprised; but I guess, with 150 years of hindsight ( Read more... )

George Gissing's New Grub Street is more than just my favourite Victorian novel -- it might be my favourite novel, full stop.

And from the VICTORIA list, someone notes that a British company selling consumer goods (don't know which one) spent ten thousand pounds on advertising in 1855. For those of us who think that mass advertising campaigns are a purely modern phenomenon....

Wish I had here a picture to share of Carlyle's ten-foot perambulating hat.