Counter-intuitive

"Never judge a book by its cover". One of those things you are forever being told as a small child, presumably in a misguided attempt to dispel prejudices and bigotry amongst those too young even to have prejudices and bigotry. (Actually, if memory serves me right, my parents did me the great courtesy of not harping endlessly ( Read more... )

Travelling TravestyThroughout history, members of the fairer sex have been disguising themselves as men to go and do traditionally "male" things, such as fighting wars, from which women were barred. There were female "monks" whose real biological sex was only discovered after their deaths ( Read more... )

Rock bottomIt's an oft-quoted (and equally often misquoted) cliché that catastrophe theory says that a butterfly fluttering its wings in South America cna cause an earthquake on the other side of the world. It seems like such a small thing, doesn't it? And yet the difference between having it all and having nothing at all can turn on something ( Read more... )

Food MemoryIt's a strange time to be writing about food, when I'm feeling sick a lot of the time, and have no appetite the rest of the time. Even some of my childhood food memories aren't working the way they ought to in terms of getting me to eat anything like properly ( Read more... )

What does narcissism have to do with me?

It's all about me. No, really, it is all about me ( Read more... )

Three Little Words

Follow your dreams.

Ever since I was 13, I've dreamt of living in France. At that time, the rather childish romanticised version of the dream saw me married to a rich Frenchman and living either in Paris or in La Rochelle, in Charente-Maritime. Or preferably both, if the Frenchman really were that rich. I was streets ahead ( Read more... )

When you pray, move your feet

The facile response to this is that, yes, if you're kneeling through the prayers and you don't move your feet, you'll get pins and needles and will have difficulty even hobbling up to the communion rail ( Read more... )

It is a cold, misty, polluted November evening in Cambridge. Many of the streetlights are out in the tourist centre, as are those just round the little snicket on the way home where no sane tourist would venture. For this snicket is also used as the cut-through by the damaged and addicted homeless people on their way to the largest of the town's ( Read more... )

When people think of an engineer (if they ever think of one at all, that is), the concept of "construction" is more likely to spring to mind than that of "deconstruction" (or indeed "destruction ( Read more... )

All Souls' Day has been and gone, and the year draws inexorably to a close ( Read more... )