- Lo, this thing is the next thing.
[T]he joy of divorce parties.
Okay, rites de passages, they are a thing, and the article cites cultural traditions which have rituals to mark the transition from married life to singledom. In Judaism, a divorce document called a get is presented from husband to wife, in the presence of rabbis and witnesses, to ( Read more... )

Even if sleep is still a bit disrupted and I fade out early.
Panel I was on went well (I think?) and have been to several, occasionally making a contribution in audience discussion time.
However, I missed my chance at nominating Evil Mother Incarnate at the Dead Evil Mothers panel - which sort of sprang from my more general thoughts about changing ( Read more... )

Strokes and hugs are being edged out of our lives.
Is it just me, and did I just somehow miss it entirely, but was there a time when people were randomly going around touching people who weren't family or intimate friends, outside various situations such as medical consultations, etc? And that was good?
Would also add that I do not think that I am ( Read more... )

Idly surfing around via tablet over the weekend, I came across somebody writing to an advice column seeking counsel as a widow with 2 small children contemplating remarriage -
And whether she should pick the suitor who knew a lot about theories of child-rearing.
NB there was no mention either of whether he actually had children of his own, either ( Read more... )

Letter in today's Guardian Weekend (not actually a link, really): 'Tim Dowling's weekly column seems, essentially, to be about how nasty his wife has been to him that week. It leaves me utterly perplexed as to why he is still married to her.' Whereas my response to his columns, as to those of most Hapless Male Columnists is 'why does she stay ( Read more... )

Further to my earlier post on men and litfic, do we note that most of the winners of the Bad Sex Award have been male and that the existence of the BSA seems to have induced a certain, hmmm, performance anxiety about writing about it?

On women's writing, am not going to be terribly convinced by a piece on the New Women's Confessional which avers ( Read more... )

Fox! In the garden! This morning!

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Have joined LinkedIn following being sent an invite to join Network of someone I know and who might plausibly be adding me. Can someone explain to me in simple terms the point of it all and how it works? Am bafflement at the moment.

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Ow Ow Ow Euuuuuwwwww. Maybe it's a put-on? Rather hope so.

Do get that some ( Read more... )

Zoe Williams is possibly this week's winner of the It's All More Complicated Award (a tasteful statuette in simulated bronze finish of a hedgehog in an advanced IAMC yoga pose) with her 'There is no one true way of Motherhood and individual babies are not fungible units' piece in today's Guardian G2.

Re breastfeeding:
[H]owever timeless and ( Read more... )

Anthony Bourdain: My war on fast food. The bad boy chef wants his young daughter to see fast food as the enemy. And in his eyes no tactic is too dirty in his fight against McDonald's.

(His daughter is two-and-a-half.)
My wife and I are speaking in hushed tones outside our daughter's bedroom door, where she's pretending to be asleep. "Sssshhhh!! She ( Read more... )

Barbara Pym does the ton (and is Excellent)? Oxymoronic fashion: The biker cardigan.
I met her in the libraree
She turned around and sssshed me - You get the picture? -
Yes we see -
That's when I fell for
The Leader of the Pack
(Vroom vroom vroom vroom)

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And on other internal combustion-related issues, yet another person claiming that competence ( Read more... )