My fellow merkins, here I am back in the US and finally on a holiday after several long, slow weeks of work which left me brain-frazzled and hopeless and, as you'll have noticed, incapable of writing even the briefest of updates.

I am sitting in an air-conditioned internet place, while outside the rest of northern Virginia - Nova, as the cool kids ( Read more... )

One of Paris's many summer festivals is on this weekend, a literary festival organised by the legendary left-bank bookshop Shakespeare & Co. Hannah and I cycled over this morning to see if we could get a seat to hear Martin Amis in conversation with Will Self. It was a bit chaotic - there's no tickets, it's first come, first served and consequently ( Read more... )

I don't really have time to post properly, but I just have to say THAT I JUST INTERVIEWED MICK JAGGER!!

God gives the nuts, as Kafka so wisely said, but he does not crack them. Actually Kafka didn't say that, but he did say something remarkably similar in German, and his point was not lost. In my case the metaphor is a simple one to keep in mind, because for me these figurative nuts also happen to be real nuts, which, thanks to some combination of ( Read more... )

There is a furniture chain here whose slogan is "YOU HAVE AN UNCLE IN THE FURNITURE BUSINESS". It's in so many jingles that no one here thinks it's the slightest bit strange, but to me it sounds like the kind of code-phrase swapped by Russian agents in the 80s.

"You have an uncle in the furniture business."
"But the Moscow branch no longer makes ( Read more... )

From time to time I write to the OED. It's not like a penpal thing, that would be awful. But I do keep a list of words which interest or confuse or delight me when I read - because, as we've learned, I am twelve kinds of sad when it comes to such things - and occasionally I come across ante- or post-datings which I like to pass on to people as ( Read more... )

Two French colleagues asked me to arbitrate in an argument today about whether or not unproper "is a word" (after it was used in an interview by a UN spokesman, whose first language was not English).

Probably, I guessed - and then ten minutes later I suddenly remembered, as one does, that great line from Othello about how ‘there's millions now alive ( Read more... )

Guys, I have just had two showers in a row. Oh Lord. I'm on my way back and I feel amazing. My films sold really well with clients, apparently - my boss is happy with me and so I'm happy, although I could have stayed for another month and never run out of things to film.

Every day there was extraordinary. Speeding around the city on the back of a ( Read more... )

...And you can see that story here.

It's been four days since I was able to have a wash. I dream of running water.

Today I went downtown to see what the so-called looting is really like ( Read more... )