As a child, I had a series of Ladybird children’s books with fairytales such as Snow White and Rose Red and Beauty and the Beast. The illustration style was a 60s mainstream version of archaic, as if it were a series of oil paintings with the stories set in some ill-defined period between the middle [...]
Author Archive
Stella and the magic carpet
Stella has followed the hallowed footsteps of Scotty G. to Berlin. She will now attempt to communicate an art installation in photographs. All good art installations are of course impossible to capture and document. Nevertheless, Stella will risk diminishing the work to share it with you. It takes place in the Neue Nationalgalerie designed by [...]
Twice bitten
Spoiler alert: post discusses Twilight series and movies. I know we’ve been here before…but I just saw Eclipse! Last time, I wrote about the books. Now let me indulge in the movie world. I went with a girlfriend to see Eclipse at D.C.’s Uptown Theater this week; we resignedly raised the average age a good [...]
1966 and all that
There are two defining moments in English history. The defeat of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings by William the Conqueror in 1066 and the victory of the English soccer team in the 1966 World Cup. That second moment healed all the defeats, disappointments, and humiliations of the previous 900 years. The victory could [...]
The Friday poems: dogs and cats
Dharma by Billy Collins The way the dog trots out the front door every morning without a hat or an umbrella, without any money or the keys to her dog house never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration. Who provides a finer example of a life without encumbrance— Thoreau in [...]
Gifted
I remember my favorite present. I was about 7 and woke up one morning to find three new and shiny things next to my bed. A hip little doll baby with caramel skin, freckles, lashes and blue eyeshadow. She sported matching shorts and tunic in Fuchsia pink with jewel-tone Scottie dogs in turquoise, emerald and [...]
Menstruation memoir
If all goes to plan, I’m having my last period. That’s 29 years of menstruation. Approximately 382 periods. Thousands of tampons and pads. There’s nothing fun about menstruation and yet facing its end is bizarre. It’s what one does. It marks the months. It’s the inconvenience around which one plans. It’s the interrupter of hot [...]
Picking a horse
So, I envisaged this blog as a detailed policy analysis of the Labour (!) and Liberal Democrat manifestos as I decide how to cast my postal ballot (when and if it arrives) ahead of the May 6 General Election in the UK. However, I don’t have the time nor, it turns out, the inclination to [...]
