If you received an email from me this evening and it was a bit scrambled, apologies. Competing rather over-vigorously on the squash court at lunchtime, I headbutted the wall while making a desperate attempt to retrieve my opponent’s drop shot.
And I think it is catching up with me.
So note to self: I must curb my competitive instincts, at least when I’ve really got no chance of winning…
This is what you might call a second bite of the apple: due to a logistical foulup I ended up doing the BBC FiveLive Britblog roundup interview for a second week in a row, and having listened, and read the full show I’ve now made a resolution not to miss it again: there is a roundup of Sudanese bloggers, previously unpublished World War I letters, and a lot more excellent stuff.
(And having listened to myself again, I’ve sworn to give up saying “indeed” at every opportunity… but I was very tired, which explains how stumbly I sound.)
P.S. Wandering around the links, I found this lovely site of bicycle pictures from around the world.
I’ve never really been sold on the “there’s no community in London” tale – if you’ve moved here from Bangkok the place looks like a positive model of civility and goodwill.
And I proved it again on Sunday night, carrying a not so much heavy as awkwardly shaped 1930s oak library table on the train from somewhere in the depths of south London to home.
So thank you very much to the young man of Asian extraction who helped me with it off London Bridge train station, and to the Polish lady who helped me on to the Tube. Two great examples of community spirit in a great city.
I am being paid (no not a fortune) to post the following video on this blog – and I’ll be donating the payment to the Green Party.
It is described as “offbeat, satirical look at how climate change has affected the mating habits of the birds and the bees in the UK countryside”. I’m not sure that’s quite how I’d describe it — the humour is a little on the obvious side for what I’d call satire — but it is made I’m told for a train company (although so far as I can see there’s no branding in it) and is supposed to promote train travel.
There’ll be a small payment for each UK viewing.
(The source is Unruly Media.)
Over on Blogcritics I’ve a review of Blue Death – Disease, Disaster and the Water We Drink by Dr. Robert D. Morris. It is a slightly odd mix of history (covering some fairly well-trodden ground in a cheerfully anecdotal manner) and polemic, but it has some very worthwhile, and worrying, things to say about why you should be concerned about what’s coming out of the tap. (But happily points out that what somes out of a bottle is just as bad, if not worse.
Now the election panic is over, some hope of a return to balance in life: so to the British Museum on My London Your London for a powerful little exhibition on slavery that looks particularly at how the economics of it all tied together, and fuelled European growth and luxury living.
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