The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the ( Read more... )

Hello! Is this still a fashionable, vital, young person's medium? I feel like an X-Factor winner's second album; received by a torrent of silence. I'm here, I'm knocking on the moonlit door, my horse is champing the grasses like he's spent the last six years on Astroturf, but is there anybody there? Is there bollocks ( Read more... )

Well Jesus Christ almighty, it has just dawned on me that I haven't posted here for nigh on six months! The last time I felt obliged to issue some garrulous screed, snowdrifts had covered the pavements and we were all tramping to work like Russian soldiers at Stalingrad. Now the troublesome neige has slurried its way back into nature's bounteous ( Read more... )

If I could paint this country's response to heavy snowfall, it would look something like Munch's The Scream. Except the figure's face would not be riven with existential dread, but with the kind of look that the helpless Englishman wears when his feet slip from under him, and the awful realisation hits that he's going to be reduced to a small child ( Read more... )

So I now have a mini-incarnation on Twitter! Yes, amongst Stephen Fry and Andy Murray and all the other luminaries there is me. Trading under the name of (what else):

https://twitter.com/thecircleline

Let's be friends!

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'December 19. - The annual invitation came to spend Christmas with Carrie’s mother - the usual family festive gathering to which we always look forward. Lupin declined to go. I was astounded, and expressed my surprise and disgust. Lupin then obliged us with the following Radical speech: “I hate a family gathering at Christmas. What does it mean? ( Read more... )

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You know what they say about men with big feet.... big shoes! But did you also know that every person in the UK knows someone who has made that joke? True fact. That considered, I always thought the idea of men with big feet having big shoes was one of those urban myths that has quickly disseminated into the sphere of public knowledge and acquired ( Read more... )