Essays & Opinion
Friendships from Afar
I have a friend, named Lucinda. She is 11,639 kilometres (7,232 miles) away from me. Fourteen years ago, we met in a place that is 4,925 km (3,060 miles) from where I now sit, and […]
flotsam & jetsam
Essays & Opinion
Into the Blue with the Terminal Blues
Wait, hurry up, who are you? Belt off, hurry up, wait. There was a time when air travel was associated with glamour; a world of long-legged elegant women inviting you to converse with dashing uniformed […]
comedy
The Rhyme of Kate-la-Dime
The girl they call Kate-la-Plate, Jumped right on to a roller skate. She rolled herself down the hillside, Shouting and screeching: ‘watch out, mate!’ But keeping her balance all the way, Until her wheels got […]
Essays & Opinion
Souled Out
Congratulations to GameStation, high street and online retailers of computer games, for knowing how to spot a bargain. It seems most of us would sell our immortal souls very cheaply. And when we are talking […]
Essays & Opinion
Meaning to be Forgotten
There is nothing so common as language. Whilst there is sadness at stories of the death of some old languages, the truth is that the language does not die so much as its speakers. The […]
comedy
Searching for Halfthoughts
Miserypuss Rupert Murdoch may have decided that deindexing his news content from Google may be good for business, but it would be terrible for Halfthoughts. Whatever people are searching for in life, or at least […]
Essays & Opinion
Spellcheck Serendipity
Time was that if you typed: “I’d like to throttle Bill Gates for his monopolistic business practices” into Microsoft Word and then checked the phrase against its built-in thesaurus, it offer the following phrase in […]
comedy
The 90 Wonders of the World
Herodotus has a lot to answer for. He lived during the wars between Greece and Persia in the 5th Century BC. His writings about the origins of those wars mean he is now referred to […]
comedy
Reasons to Recast
In films and television, people always get cast according to how they look. Short people are angry/pushy/talkative. Slim young women are feisty. People with kindly faces are kind. Old people of colour are wise. Attractive […]
Essays & Opinion
What Is Wrong With The World
I am in Oman. Oman is a hot and sunny country. It is day time, and it must be thirty Celsius in the shade. But I am shivering. You see, I am inside. I am […]