When poor old battered Odysseus landed on Circe’s island having lost all his ships (except his flagship) when he tangled with the Laestrygonians (their king liked to eat Greek flesh and swallowed up most of his crews, yummy) Circe — witch, sorceress and goddess in her own right — turned the few survivors into swine,
A pair of anti-terrorism officers watched us check through into the boarding lounge. They stood behind the easyJet woman and took us in as we came through. One was about 30, the other about 40; both hard as nails. The younger did the Speedy Boarders; the other the common herd. What was remarkable about them,
‘How could you forget to get on the train?’ asked the keeper. ‘I can understand how you forgot to get off the train, but how were you standing on the platform waiting for another train to go back the other way, and the train came but you forgot to get on it?’ I had been
William Haggas’s Addeybb heralded the opening of the Flat season by winning the Lincoln Handicap on 24 March but I find it hard to engage with racing that isn’t over obstacles until the excitement of this weekend’s Grand National is over. That said, recent devastation of the jumping programme by Britain’s monsoon season and the
It’s April and as I write, it’s still bloody cold and the fire’s lit. The other day I could have sworn that spring was on its way but it seems it’s been unaccountably delayed. It’s probably down to leaves on the line or some such guff about the wrong type of sunlight or the points
According to new research published in Advances in Physiology Education, men tend to significantly overestimate their own intelligence whereas women only marginally overestimate theirs. The architect of this study, Katelyn Cooper, a doctoral student at Arizona State University, believes this helps explain why fewer women embark on PhDs in the life sciences and why there
Q. We were about to send off to the printers the invitation for our son’s wedding (we agreed to do this bit) but now the prospective in-laws are asking for the use of the word ‘with’, as in ‘You are invited to the marriage of Lady X with Mr Y’. We have noticed that ‘with’ is
This April is the cruellest month, but not in the sense that Eliot intended. Memory and desire are mixed: memory for previous verdant seasons; aching desire for a new one. Instead, we appear to have permanent midwinter spring, with the emphasis on midwinter. So this might seem to be absolutely the wrong time to drink
Crooning is I think the word to describe what my husband was doing to the lyrics of a Beach Boys number. ‘Round, round, get around, I get around,’ he crooned ludicrously, for no one less like a Beach Boy than he, with his frayed tweed jacket cuffs, could be imagined. He was, however, right if
At the risk of sounding like Jean Baudrillard, I would like to suggest that the internet revolution has not yet taken place. So far, lots of very clever people have performed amazing feats of technical ingenuity. But for the most part our collective behaviour has so far failed to change enough to truly benefit us.
