With my life having the shape it does, I am sometimes asked for my idea of a great love poem.  I am known, despite myself, as a cynic, so there is often laughter when I present my title of choice.

Were you but lying cold and dead,
And lights were paling out of/… Read full post »

I make men unhappy.  I don’t mean I actively set about to make them miserable.  I mean that there is quite literally something about my presence that saddens them.  Not every man, not everywhere, and not all the time.  But many, often.  This quality is, as far as I can/… Read full post »

Below is a picture of a gentleman scholar of my acquaintance.  The picture was taken in Turku, Finland.  The charming-looking structure outside which he is sitting is a former public toilet.  Is has been converted to a pub.  It is called The Toilet.

The boy has eyes too, of course.  He is no eyeless creature.  Indeed, such eyes.  If I am a witch, or some sport of nature, he is a living anime figure.  He is like Uchiha Sasuke, the angry, powerful boy from Naruto, all black hair and large, sloe eyes.  I have/… Read full post »

Charlie Brooker, one of my favourite Guardian columnists, made the astute observation below earlier this year.  I have since returned to it in my mind any number of times, and think it stands as one of the finest assessments of the situation.  For some of us, anyway.

Mr. Brooker conclu… Read full post »

We are all, surely, used by now to the phenomenon of the electronic voice.  By this I mean the voices that greet us when we telephone . . . well, just about anywhere these days.  Perhaps not one’s parents, or one’s good friends, but one’s bank, or a department store, or… Read full post »

I am the carrier of a genetic anomaly that manifests itself in a bicoloured iris; that is, my right eye contains two colours.  It is not breathtakingly rare, but neither is it common, and I am used to people suddenly halting in the middle of conversations to comment upon the fact… Read full post »

This woman is Violet Constance Jessop.  This, I must say, is my idea of a tough broad.  And I mean that in a very, very good way.

So, what do she and the Divine Miss T. have in common?  Uh, nothin', really.  Except for this:  According to the article, Miss Jess… Read full post »

No, I didn’t actually know the righteous dood personally.  But his feast day is my birthday.  St. David is the patron saint of Wales. He founded a monastery there in the sixth century, which in Wales is apparently enough to get to you canonised. 

I do not have a… Read full post »

I told the boy that all I wanted for Christmas was for Santa Claus to bring him to New York for a couple of weeks in January.  Then last night I had a strange and vivid dream--not upsetting, just odd--that I was in our acting teacher's studio and could see many… Read full post »

Today, I wish to direct you toward something for which (like everything else on my blog, I'm sure) you shall prove eternally, weepily grateful.  There there, baby.  There there.  Now, pull yourself together and go here.

The following image does not come from that magical site, b… Read full post »

There have to be, what, two or three of you?It's too late for this young man, but please, save yourself.  Because I love you, although not in any illegal ways.

http://www.neatorama.com/neat/worst-sin.htm Read full post »

The boy took me to his ancestral town when I last visited him in his country.  It was a harsh, brown prospect in winter, but I imagine it is at other times of the year as well; the north of his country is not lush.  He slowed the car down as… Read full post »

That's right.  They're dead.  And there's more than one of them.  I'm both weird and a hussy.

Here they are, in no particular order of deliciousness:

Toshiro Mifune.  Akira Kurosawa’s go-to leading man until they fell out in the mid-60s.  Alternately overwhelm/… Read full post »

On economists:

"Tiresome, no wide outlooks, no touch with life, inferiority complexes and no great ideas."
-Lydia Lopokova Keynes, Baroness Keynes, on practitioners of Carlyle's dismal science.

"The long-term is a misleading guide to current affairs; in the long-term we are all dead."
John Maynard Keyne… Read full post »