In case the gentle reader has not been convinced of William ‘Topaz’ McGonagall’s value by your mere words alone here is a little taster from this website dedicated to his works. Please note the sense of foreboding in the penultimate verse and then have a treat by reading the follow up.
BEAUTIFUL Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay [...]
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Posted in Britain, Culture, Drink, Family, Food, Holidays, Patriotism, Poetry, tagged Burns' Night, Robert Burns, William Topaz McGonagall on January 30, 2008 | 2 Comments »
You are not in the least Scottish.
This has always been a source of faint irritation because you are able to conjure up in almost equal amounts a Welsh background, an Irish one, a Northern English past, a Southern English birthplace and a strong connection to the Channel Islands out of France. So to miss out on being [...]
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Last night you went to half a Prom.
It all started quite auspiciously. You both set off in good time, even allowing for side trips to that endlessly fascinating retail emporium, Boots the Chemists, and so you arrived a good 45 minutes before the start.
At which point you realised that you had picked a popular Prom.
Now [...]
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Posted in Architecture, Britain, Chelsea, Culture, Food, Music, Nodnol, Sightseeing, The Proms, the Royal Albert Hall on July 30, 2007 | 4 Comments »
So there you and B are, sitting on a bench eating grapes and a pork pie, admiring the view of large tombstones which populate the square you are in, and basking in the unexpected sunshine.
Suddenly you become aware that the young lady next to you has not only come prepared with cutlery and a china plate [...]
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You’ve missed rather a lot of rehearsals for your latest choral extravaganza, so the full glory of the Bach and Vivaldi Glorias you are planning to inflict on the public have only now started bursting in upon you.
It was all the little black notes in the Bach that were immediately worrying. So little and so black [...]
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So there you are at work, dubiously contemplating some hapless trainee’s latest assignment and grumbling wrathfully about the total inability of modern university trained youth to reference their sources in any manner which makes sense (”…what are they teaching them? Surely they can’t all have done travel and tourism for their degree?”), when a colleague comes in [...]
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Posted in Britain, Communication, Culture, Culture Shock, ESC, Eurovision, Eurovision 2007, Eurovision Song Contest, Flags, Language, Lasha Tumbai, Morality, Music, Patriotism, Russia, TV, The Rest of the World, Ukraine on May 13, 2007 | 12 Comments »
You adore the Eurovision Song Contest and you say this totally without the kind of qualifiers that Brits usually add at this point. Such as ‘it’s so tragiclly kitsch’.
In fact, you are rather bemused by the fact that the British persist in regarding the thing as a monumental joke and yet follow programmes like Pop Idol with [...]
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Going for a ramble round Kew Botanical Gardens last weekend brought your maternal Grandma powerfully to mind.
Now everybody in your family likes gardening and gardens and so she was by no means the only family member you have done gardens with. Although your paternal Granny’s agoraphobia tended to make this a trip to [...]
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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 [...]
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