I've not been posting on here in a long time as you've probably spotted - I tend to do most of my internet access through my smartphone these days and that tends to lend itself more towards twitter or facebook use than long-form writings on here.

However, the European Union is back in the news again and once more I feel compelled to write ( Read more... )

Yesterday was Europe Day, though not that you would know here in the United Kingdom. Europe Day is an annual celebration of peace and unity across the European Union, be we weren't observing it here as we were too busy celebrating a transient victory over old enemies rather than a lasting peace between new friends. Which I think says a lot about ( Read more... )

This is something I had been meaning to post for a while, but hadn't gotten around to it, what with Christmas and everything. In the middle of December I went to the Sheffield Folk Chorale's Spitewinter concert at the Cathedral. This year they also had folk trio Lady Maisery singing - they're a group I hadn't heard of before, and they were really, ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I've treated you all to one of my long rambling streams of consciousness, so what the hell, it's time for another one. The truth is I've not been paying much attention to LiveJournal lately, dipping in and out here and there so I've probably missed a fair amount. I've mostly been hanging out in the other placeOne of the ( Read more... )

In other non-book-related news, my phone took it upon itself to play up this morning - it's an HTC Wildfire S that I bought about eighteen months ago. When I fetched it out of my pocket at breakfast it had gone into "Car Mode" entirely of its own volition... and kept doing this even after I'd told it not to. A spot of googling suggested that this ( Read more... )

I picked this up on Monday as part of a two-for-one deal at my local bookshop (the other book I picked up was "Coldheart Canyon" by Clive Barker but I shan't be reading that for a while as my other half has "borrowed" it for herself). In "Schild's Ladder", a terrible accident at a deep-space research facility twenty thousand years in the future ( Read more... )

The news that the current pope is stepping down did not escape me today, and neither did the sadly all-too-predictable reactions from certain quarters of the internet that I shan't name, including friends who I had really hoped would have known better ( Read more... )

It's been a few weeks since I wrote anything on here - time getting away from me once again as happens far too often these days.

( So what have I been up to? )

I'd intended to write this at the end of 2012, but life got in the way as so often happens, so it's a little late. I didn't post as much as I'd wanted to last year, somehow it always seemed that when I wanted to I didn't have the time, and when I had the time I didn't have the inclination. I'll have to try and do better in 2013 ( Read more... )

I had an interesting conversation with K over lunch today, and wanted to share some of it on here, as well as a round-up of other thoughts I'd had over the course of the week but hadn't had time to write down ( Read more... )