Finally got back from Conservation the material we acquired some months ago as an addition to existing holdings of person's papers and I have started looking at them.

And I am massively cheered by the discovery that a) the notebooks contain data that fills in certain chronological gaps in what we already have and b) also go some way to explicating ( Read more... )

Nadine Dorries MP has opined that ‘if a stronger just say no message was given to children** in school there might be an impact on sex abuse'.

And while one may feel that she is really a lone dingbat, the article linked suggests that she is Not Without Influence, or indeed, that the current government is not quite so distanced from her as the PM's ( Read more... )

Dept of Tube ( Read more... )

Have been having a month now of losing stuff, forgetting things, breaking things, and things not working or stopping working (we returned to work to find that a core piece of software No Can Haz at the moment, grrr).

I am trying rather hard not to find this obscurely symbolic and a metaphor for something, though I know not what.

Not as though there ( Read more... )

Nirpal Dhaliwal (the former other half of Liz Jones, who also told the world more than anyone can have wanted to know about their menage in his columns) informs anyone who might be interested that he is so secure in his studly het masculinity that he can be quite comfortable with gay male friends, having snogged several ('beautiful and charismatic ( Read more... )

I have been given to think, following the recent question on trennels about why we like Forest's books, about the difference between liking something and being able to give objective reasons why it is good.

There are many authors and books that I can recognise as good by objective criteria, that I never warm up to. And other books where I can see why ( Read more... )

...the kind you have while travelling: sitting upright, head lolling to one side, mouth open, dribbling slightly, making proto-snoring whiffling noises, and bound to wake up with a stiff neck, headache, and dry mouth.

The world's first Creationist museum - dedicated to the idea that the creation of the world, as told in Genesis, is factually ( Read more... )

Doctor prescribed crosses to beat black magic, tribunal told:
The patient, Mrs K, attended the Westside Contraceptive Clinic in Westminster, London, for a contraceptive injection after complaining of pain and bleeding. But the panel was told that Dr Pratt claimed to have special powers and gave her stones and crosses to protect her. She allegedly ( Read more... )