Life
Futurism
In Competition No. 3306, you were invited to submit a poem about procrastination. Procrastination looms large in Out of Sheer…
Museum pizzas
As the government withers this column falls to ennui and visits Pizza Express. As David Cameron, who left the world…
Vanilla ice cream
I could map out my life geographically and temporally in scoops of ice cream. From the oyster delights handed over…
Debunking debanking
As I sat down to write this column, an old friend let me know he’d just been ‘debanked’. That is,…
Wild life
The Farm, Laikipia Outside the nightjars were calling and a zebra brayed in the valley. The constellations were still bright…
Real life
When I received an email from the Co-op telling me they had made a mistake with my car insurance, and…
High life
Gstaad There are lurid rumours circulating around this Alpine village that an international literature symposium has taken place, with some…
Aussie life
Amanda Stoker’s willingness to talk about her bottom has given David Van the distinction of becoming Australia’s first real subject…
Language
I have written here in the past about the expression ‘weaponised words.’ There are many examples: ‘fascist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘hard-right’…
Super Tuscans
In Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the hopes embodied in the title dissolve into grimness and black irony. It was all…
Bureaucrats have seized control
I have a hunch why people in late middle age are abandoning the workforce: their jobs, as they once knew…
Solution to 2608: Support
Reading the title as ‘backup’, unclued answers VOLTE-FACE, RETREAT, SPIN, TURN, COUNTER, BACKTRACK, WITHDRAWAL, ROTATE, RETIREMENT and RECOIL had to…
My new law is better than Ireland’s
I’ve always been envious of journalists who give their names to ‘laws’, as in O’Sullivan’s First Law: ‘All organisations that…
Sonnets on sonnets
In Competition No. 3305, you were invited to submit a sonnet entitled ‘Sonnet On Famous And Familiar Sonnets’. The germ…
Puzzle No. 758
White to play and win. Composed by Josef Hasek, 1929. One plausible try is 1 Kc5 but 1…f5! prepares to…
