On belated returns.

I missed the blog’s second birthday.
Pants.
This does not bode well for the Star.

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On a book meme.

A while (a long while) ago, Reed tagged me with a book meme. Which I haven’t been ignoring, but just procrastinating over. It’s something worrying when you end up writing essays instead of fiddling with the blog, but at least I’ve got my priorities right (I always put off the most important thing).  
Total Number of Books Owned - [...]

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On korrect speling.

When you were about nine years old you were extracted from the classes that everyone else was attending in order to do extra nature study.
It was one of those half arsed efforts schools make sometimes towards catering for ‘gifted’ children, the quotation marks there being entirely justified as the lesson you were lifted out of on the grounds [...]

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On being interviewed.

I decided to have a go, or rather, get Aphra Behn to think up the questions so I could have a go, at this interview meme that’s been going round.
Why did you choose to go to Russia in the first place?
I decided to do some travelling after I finished university. Mainly because I couldn’t think [...]

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On celebrating.

Today is my first Blogiversary.
There I was, a year ago today, writing about football. Of all things. 
The year hasn’t been an unmitigated success.
But the blog is a lot of fun.
I think I’ll keep it.
 Happy Blogiversary, blog!
           

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On Solnushka.

The name ‘Solnushka’ isn’t one that any self respecting native Russian speaker would choose.
This is because it’s a term of endearment.
Loosely speaking, it means ’sun’.
    

But in actual fact, it’s closer to ‘cute little sunny wunny oochie coo’. 
It is, essentially, the Russian equivalent of calling yourself ’sweet cheeks’. Or ‘honey bun’. Or ’sungglums’. Or something [...]

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On eight random things.

Doctor Z has tagged me to write about 8 random things about myself.
It is surprisingly hard to think of 8 random things. So here are 8 probably not so random things.

I can’t spell. At all. As a teacher of English, I am obliged to pretend that I care about this, but really I couldn’t give [...]

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On thoughtfulness.

You’ve been honoured by both Charlotte and Aphra Behn now for the Thinking Blogger award meme started here. Ordinarily, your instinct would be to say something self depreciating and belittle the compliment. Unfortunately these are two women who you respect and admire quite a lot, so instead you’ve decided that to hell with that for a game [...]

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On supporting the troops.

A chap called Hobgoblin, who you came to via Charlotte and Aphra Behn’s postings on the topic, has requested movingly and persuasively that people blog about what it means to support the troops. This seems like an admirable project, even if it didn’t run headlong into your latest train of thought, so here goes.
It’s not something you feel you [...]

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On personal pronouns.

There was a reason why I started with the whole ‘you’ thing. That’s the ‘you’ that is the other half of me, not the ‘you’ reading this thing. I’ll just wait while everyone’s eyes uncross, shall I?
 The point was to ensure that the whole thing didn’t just devolve into completely self indulgent navel gazing. I thought [...]

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