Posted in Britain, Culture, Music, Work on April 27, 2007 | No Comments »
So there you are hanging off a handrail in the despised underground on your way to Covent Garden Opera House on a works night out to the ballet discussing why one of your number hasn’t managed to persuade her other half to come with you all.
“Perhaps he thinks it’s always sentimental and pretty pretty?” says [...]
Posted in Architecture, Books, Britain, Culture Shock, Drink, Music, Public Transport, Russia, Sergei Lukyanenko, Sightseeing, The Rest of the World on April 23, 2007 | 7 Comments »
Having discovered that you had slightly misinterpreted the setting of the book by a Spanish author - with large chunks of it set in Spain simply because Spain is the centre of the universe, as opposed to somewhere suitably Continentally decedent for odd Art to take place - it got you thinking about the other series [...]
Posted in Art, Books, Culture Shock, Language, Morality, Schemata, The Rest of the World, Work, Writing on April 20, 2007 | No Comments »
You can be very boring on the topic of grammar. And punctuation. Particularly commas. The rules are comforting, even if you do treat them as something of an abstract concept when it actually becomes time to apply them.
You are considerably more interested in how we actually use language, though. And the routines we follow and [...]
Posted in Drink, Family, Russia, Samovars on April 13, 2007 | 10 Comments »
Last weekend you bought a samovar. There it is, sitting on top of the fridge, looking shiny and brassily cheerful.
Actually, that one’s not yours. Yours isn’t quite that shiny. You found this picture here, along with a lot of other samovars. Nice, aren’t they?
Anyway, the total number of samovars you own is now six, if you include the one [...]
Posted in Architecture, Holidays, Religion, Russia, Sergiyev Posad, Sightseeing, Travel on April 8, 2007 | 12 Comments »
Sergiyev Posad is one of the Golden Ring towns. That is, it’s one of twelve towns floating around Moscow which are historically significant and are recommended as worth a visit if to anyone who is going to be in the region for any length of time.
You’ve actually been to two. The other one was Suzdal.
But you tended to [...]
Posted in Architecture, Britain, Education, Literature, Sightseeing, Travel on April 5, 2007 | 2 Comments »
On your return from Margate you stopped off in Rochester. Which turned out to be a very literary visit.
Ever since you had sailed through it on your way to the seaside, the name had been rolling around in your head and bugging you. You couldn’t remember why the place was so familiar when the sight of [...]
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