Country Mouse. That's me. How ironic that I have just been fiddling about with a translation discussing globalisation. Nevertheless, once a country mouse, always a country mouse. Town mice will find this lack of sophistication mildly amusing, and somewhat puzzling. What town mice won't realise is that for country mice, almost everything is an adventure.... Continue Reading →
Left is all right
I seldom get any sort of written communication from my younger sister (the art teacher/artist) but when I do, she is often quotable, if one punctuates: Incidentally, what happened to good old chalk boards where you had the resistance of the chalk against the board? Whiteboards and whiteboard markers have a slimy, slippery, unsatisfying relationship.... Continue Reading →
Confessions
There is always something that falls between the cracks. This is the primary reason I beat myself extra hard on the chest during the "mea culpa" part of Confession at Mass today. The sin? Failure to return a library book within the time required. It is, however, the penance rather than the sin itself which has... Continue Reading →
Helpful Household Hints
In decades past, it was fashionable for vendors of pressure cookers and refrigerators and other wondrous modern conveniences to present the proud new owners with a complimentary recipe booklet or a slim volume of useful tips for the housewife. Testimony to this trend can be found in countless difficult-to-open kitchen drawers the world over. One... Continue Reading →
Yes, but did you get the T-shirt?
Faro Hospital is a bit like a weekly boarding school. I was most amused that hospital patients whose treatment allows it, are permitted to go home for the weekend, and return to their same bed on Monday morning. I am not sure if this has a formal name - apart from "having days off" as... Continue Reading →
The Neurologist
It is Monday morning 09:20. João and I find ourselves at Faro Hospital for her appointment with her neurologist, the first in eight months. She has relapsing-remitting Multiple Sclerosis finally diagnosed seventeen years ago and has been taking daily Copaxone(R) injections for about two years. She is on a downward slide, yet as Rousseau said,... Continue Reading →
Miscellany
I had intended this post to be an account of a visit long ago to the home and workshop of world-famous Ghanaian fashion designer, Kofi Ansah. I scribbled the detail over a decade ago, and was recently reminded of this visit by a sculpture I saw which bore some similarity to something this man had... Continue Reading →
Horace and the Daily Constitutional
"O fons Bandusiae" is the entirety of what I remember of this ode from Horace. In my mind it is linked to possibly the worst head cold I ever had in my life during an examination, and a rather strange "D" symbol next to the word "Latin" on my O-level result slip back in the... Continue Reading →
In search of a red hat
The only possible excuse for my not already owning a deep red fedora is that I am not fond of shopping. I am certainly not fond of shopping for a particular item. Indeed, I liken the recent formal necessity for navy blue shoes to having an aspirin dissolve in one's mouth before it can be... Continue Reading →
Hypertext me, why don’t you?
This was not my idea. I stumbled upon something someone else found and posted in my favourite translators' forum that got me going.Today marks 20 years of the official launch into the public domain of the World Wide Web. We have the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, primarily to thank for this. He was the one who wrote... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 