-
Mittical
A message from Ocado:
We are writing to tell you that we have now equipped all our drivers with boot mitts in order to ensure your floors are protected during delivery.
To take advantage of this service, please ask your driver to wear boot mitts when bringing your groceries into your home - they will be happy to oblige.
Regards,
Mark Bentley
Head of ( Read more... ) -
Earmarks
The Sun's headlines are nothing compared to the New York Times'. -
Crash
From an article about vehicle crashes in the military, which interest me:
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in the U.S. Army, accounting for nearly 50% of all deaths.
Doesn't that include nearly everything bar the suicides and foot-shooters? Is being killed by a Taliban militant an unintentional injury? You'd think so.
I read ( Read more... ) -
Praise
These days I am doing two things. Waiting, waiting and waiting for my editors to send the manuscript back with revisions; and swimming. My US agent wrote a few weeks back that she thought the book was terrific and that my US publisher told me that I had "done a fabulous job." But put those through the mangle of American over-egging and they ( Read more... ) -
Whale
I have stopped watching the news but I switched it on. Sometimes you can learn stuff. It was late in the broadcast so time for news that was not about bombs or fatigues. It was about a whale. A baby whale had beached on a beach. Humans were trying to save it. They wrapped it in wet blankets, which seemed odd but is standard procedure. A Scottish ( Read more... ) -
Flash
It is that time of the month/year/magazine publishing calendar again, and I would like to solicit some flash fiction for Tank, the magazine which I partially work for. Short stories, 300 words maximum, about anything. No poetry though please.
Please send as soon as possible to rosegeorge3 at googlemail.com
There is no payment but you do get a nice ( Read more... ) -
Done
First draft at least. 92,000 words of elegant prose about shit. Now I need help with a subtitle. The working title is The Big Necessity. It comes from quote by a Mumbai slum toilet builder who says his customers aspire to big apartments but they can't have that so they start with the big necessity, the toilet. The subtitle has to be arresting but ( Read more... ) -
Oh, I dunno
The economist Kirk Hamilton wrote a report recently called "Where is the wealth of nations?" In it, he put forward his belief that rich countries are rich because they have intangible capital, ie. skills and education. People are more important than dams or for example macho engineering products ( Read more... ) -
Pearls and rubies
I'm reading The Civilizing Process by Norbert Elias. It is apparently a groundbreaking earthshattering piece of sociology, written in the 1930s. I'm reading it to try to understand how concepts of privacy and taboo come about, because, my god, they are odd. Why, for example, is it acceptable for men and women to say that they need a pee but not a ( Read more... ) -
Fruit
I read a lot of dry reports about worthy important matters. Sometimes the writers of the dry reports have fun. In the list of acronyms in the groundbreaking, world-changing UN Habitat Challenge of Slums, just after ( Read more... )