In the same general vein as silveradept earlier this week, I'd like to take this opportunity to wonder if any person who reads this would like a Christmas Card. Every year, my family home-produces a run of cards, mostly in the form of a beautiful photo of last year's snow shaped into a card with seasonal greetings. I've reserved a stretch of the print run, ( Read more... )

A short while back, I wrote about the volunteering work I do (or at least did, goddamn Jobcentre) at ECH and the Foundling, typing up interviews with the aged. What went unmentioned is that I also volunteer at the Middle East Centre Archive on Fridays (now Tuesdays and Thursdays, rassum frassum), doing all kinds of archivey things: shifting things ( Read more... )

Being a Accurate List of certain Curious Names found on the rolls of the Foundling Hospital of London in the Middle Part of the Eighteenth Century ( Read more... )

I live in a house where it is fast becoming impossible to give presents ( Read more... )

It came from here. (Entirely safe.)

It read:

before the taking of each stance or step every black'ning church appals; in our youth time were seen, ruby tears there came;
all heart-broke i heard her say. one moment only; for the pick, uplifting, challengest the sombre glade

Glorious.

It's one thing to be aware of your debt as an abstract entity.

It's quite another to recieve a neat little statement of that debt, containing a number or two, the most significant of which lurks somewhere in the shadows above eleven thousand pounds.

So. I am aware that a good few (though certainly not all) of the people who read this are in a state where they either lack love in their life, are a long way from the love in their life, or simply live life without love. Thus, for Valentine's Day, the day when this can bite the hardest, I come to you as your faintly creepy Fairy Godfather! In ( Read more... )

So. As you may/may not know, the great, grand Father of Museums, the Asmolean, which lounges majestically on the edge of Oxford's heart, recently had a makeover ( Read more... )

Click to view

The construction industry is perhaps the only sector where you can speed up a project by adding hundreds of laggers.