Somewhere in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon Rebecca West has a passage (it's in Volume 1 of the 2 volume edition, of which my copy is mysteriously not where I thought it was, next to Vol 2, so I'm quoting from memory), that women think that one day something will happen after which life will be entirely agreeable, while men think that one day they will ( Read more... )

Haven't these people ever heard of continuities and ongoing processes as matters for the historian's interest?

Historians are always keen to identify key turning points: decisions that significantly alter subsequent events.

In context, this seems much more about the desire of meedja types to find some pin to pivot their programmes on - if it's not ( Read more... )

Yes, it's glorious when one of those moments that embodies a sense of change and hope happens, when the pendulum visibly swings and the glass stops falling hour by hour.

But what really matters is what happens after that: it's not the end, it's the beginning.

(E.g. the 'flapper vote', 1928, 10 years after the rather grudging concession of the vote ( Read more... )

Germaine Greer asserts that Making pictures from strips of cloth isn't art at all - but it mocks art's pretentions to the core. Which I don't entirely concur with.

I'm a bit huh? over the claim that 'The work of art is supposed to defy time but fabric is bound to fade and rot', which I suspect has conservators everywhere lying on the ground larfing ( Read more... )

Thought for the day. Had a physio session, yesterday, with (relatively) New Physio - Old Physio left the practice earlier this year to return to the Antipodes, so I started seeing New Physio instead.

This was the first session I've had for some months, partly because the insurance co defined my problem as chronic and will not pay for any more ( Read more... )

Have been stimulated by various things out there to consider the mindset that thinks that if you get A Certain Thing, that you only have do once, Right, that's it. Life's problems will be solved and there will be no more of them. The original grit around which this thought started accreting was the report in the paper about the Scientology belief ( Read more... )