I’ve written about spam before, but the stuff continues to exert a strange fascination over me. My most recent crop – no, you wouldn’t have a crop of spam, would you – my most recent cans of spam contained items that seemed to be struggling to become a novel, taking...
For what you are about to read, you can blame two women called, on Twitter, @rosamundi and @thefrolick. Classy and erudite (no, we've never met, why do you ask?), they normally tweet about Baroque music, fine wine, and bicycles. But today we had this exchange on...
There are masochists and then there are masochists. That wasn't clear? Sorry. I’m a bit tired. What I meant to say is that there are masochists in a sexy “fun if you like that sort of thing” way, and then there are masochists like me. We non-sexy masochists don’t need...
In the midst of preparing for this year's annual trip to Britain, I find myself thinking about my first one: a fabled journey that took place back in the mists of time, when the world was young, Stonehenge was rising on Salisbury Plain, and a tree-squirrel could swing...
Once upon a time, a writer wrote a book, as writers tend to do, and got it published, however unlikely that may seem. Then she sat back and waited for the good stuff that happens to writers who get published: trumpets sound, cherubs strew rose petals and...
I got on Twitter because of Eddie Izzard’s feet. Allow me to ’splain, as Desi used to say to Lucy. As a member of C.L.A.M. -- Chronic Late Adopters Mob -- I had just discovered the actor/comedian when he started running 7 weeks of marathons around the UK for the...