Mathilde missed a birthday party because I mixed up the date. She's already recovered but I'm still racked with guilt ( Read more... )

Homer and Langley Collyer were two brothers who barricaded themselves into their house in Harlem.  It's a fascinating tale of madness, the rodentlike evolutionary past of the human organism, and tribalism at its worst.  It's also about the last thing that I would be expected to comment on.  Yet there I was a few weeks ago on a side trip to Toronto ( Read more... )

I cycled for the first time this year ( Read more... )

I've just been to see Fascinating Aida and, apart from nearly going into respiratory failure with laughter, it was a wonderful way to spend an evening.

When I was buying pantomime tickets in December I noticed that Fascinating Aida were doing their show in Guildford in January and February and bought a couple of tickets.  I had vaguely in mind that ( Read more... )

It's been a very busy week indeed.  I was on a three day residential course at Sunningdale Park, and I seemed to spend much of the course sneaking off to do stuff.  Monday night I gave a lecture at my synagogue (Kamtza, Bar Kamtza and the Jewish War 66-73), Tuesday I was spirited away to tape a television show (Ground War, which airs this Autumn on ( Read more... )

Much noise about Terry Pratchett's K, but did everyone notice David Cannadine got one too?

Cubed chuck, onions and garlic, chestnuts, chicken livers, sherry, butternut squash and dried forest mushrooms.  Oh, and a bouquet garni, bay leaves and lashings of paprika.  The chicken livers make it a little gamey, but it tastes delightful. 

I bought a frankincense candle the other day. It hasn't got all the other bits of the Temple incense, sadly (I'd love to know what onycha, galbanum and spikenard smell like), but it has certainly made The Loft smell like ... well, like an old-fashioned Catholic church, though without the rosin edge that makes traditional church incense a little ( Read more... )

I write in the BA lounge in Manchester Airport, waiting for the first flight to Heathrow and shabbat with my girls. I'm on my third Virgin Mary of the morning and contemplating a second decaf latté ( Read more... )

I put on my service dress this morning, took my older daughter in tow, and went up to London for the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen's remembrance parade ( Read more... )