Fragments
Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there? - Harold Pinter
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Spring heeled gym
Mar 9, 2010 5:57am
I first joined a gym in 2000, when I worked in Fleet Street in London. It was a Fitness First, with trademark anodyne slogans, apparently intended to inspire, stenciled on the lime green walls (so bland were they, I can't remember them now, but they would have been of the...
Those are pearls
Mar 8, 2010 5:30am
Shoes, Chie Mihara, from Plümo.This is the second pair of Chie Mihara shoes I've stumbled upon (weirdly, on her website - watch out for the noodling Spanish guitar, running water and birdsong - I couldn't find a single pair I liked). These are a little bit chunky, but have such...
Tagine over the asylum
Mar 8, 2010 5:00am
An excellent recipe for lamb tagine from Taste.com. I'm not the greatest cook, and I don't really like to follow recipes (too impatient), but I followed this one, the results were delicious, and I was inordinately pleased with myself as a result. I love the sweet and savoury combination of...
This is what really happens
Feb 28, 2010 4:10am
Maybe it's that deep marine blue on the living room wall. A house in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from Apartment Therapy....
Fragments
Feb 28, 2010 2:33am
The following, imperfectly remembered, is the poem that appeared in my English "A" Level exam paper in 1987, in my favourite part of the exam: the "unseen poem". In past papers, it had been a 16th century or Romantic poet; so I was delighted to find something as contemporary as...
Death from above
Feb 26, 2010 8:15am
From one loathsome insect to another: I'm back in Hong Kong, where it's so damp and humid that the floor tiles in my housing block are wet and the walls beside the lift are running with water. I opened the front door on my return from work on Tuesday and...
Hungry ghosts
Feb 13, 2010 9:58pm
I inherited from my mum a tendency to react badly to insect bites. A famous family photo shows my mum with her eyes swollen shut and face a puffy mass after a bite from a horsefly. Insanely itchy, raised red welts can materialise from the smallest bite.I'm in Sydney, where...
McQueen is dead
Feb 11, 2010 5:22pm
Alexander McQueen (16 March 1969 – 11 February 2010). A designer of genius, and a man who once wrote "I am a c*nt" in the lining of a suit intended for Prince Charles. Both pictures, above, are from his last, deep sea monster-themed show at Paris Fashion Week in 2009....
The art of seeing
Feb 9, 2010 5:03am
Disparate connections: a few years ago, in the National Portrait Gallery in London, I saw some amazing portraits by Don Bachardy, including one of Aldous Huxley accompanied by a quote from Bachardy's partner, Christopher Isherwood, which I was very taken with:"How kind, how shy he is - searching painfully through...
Let's do the time warp again
Feb 6, 2010 2:04am
Beautiful, frivolous, Mihara shoes from Plümo. To be worn with a structured 1940s style dress from Alexander McQueen or Roland Mouret (in that order, below, both from Net-a-Porter)....
The air that I breathe
Feb 3, 2010 6:03am
Civic Exchange - 2009 The Air We Breathe Conference - Patterns of Respiratory Illness in Hong Kong, presented by Dr WM Chan (Hong Kong Thoracic Society)View more presentations from Civic Exchange....
Breathing
Jan 28, 2010 5:17am
This was the view from my office window on Hong Kong Island today. The very faint shadowy shape which you can, just barely, see through the murk (and you probably have to double click on the photo to make it out), is the International Commerce Centre (ICC) on Kowloon side....
Death and taxes
Jan 22, 2010 4:57am
[Photo credit mrcreighton.com]They're building another casino in Singapore - a three-towered monstrosity, improbably modelled on card decks, apparently, and built to feng shui principles (earth, wind and fire) near the Singapore Flyer, precisely positioned so that the Flyer ("the world's largest observation wheel - a moving experience at every turn":...
A necklace of raindrops
Jan 7, 2010 7:44am
At a glance it looks like a little dragon's head - and I wish it were - but it actually appears to be enmeshed leaves. From Need Supply. But I think I like this one better:...
Just like honey
Jan 7, 2010 4:35am
Chilli hot chocolateHeat a large coffee cup by filling it with hot water. Pour out the hot water. Take two generous pieces of Lindt chilli chocolate and put them in the bottom of the cup with just enough hot water to melt them. Froth a cupful of milk. Pour hot...
If you go down to Cramond...
Jan 6, 2010 3:47am
...you'll never come back. Cramond, Edinburgh, by the shore and in the snow, December 23, 2009....
Charmless garments: 3
Dec 11, 2009 1:34am
Strictly speaking this next item is not a garment, but since it completes the charmless outfit when teamed with items 1 and 2 below, and it is a particularly loathsome thing altogether, it seems only (ill-)fitting to write about it.My dad was always hopeless at picking clothes as gifts and...
95 reasons
Dec 11, 2009 12:41am
For years my family always owned the same car, in different iterations: a Saab 95. It was never a new car; often rusty, sometimes featuring rustproof paint along the side in a different colour; usually in an an unlovely hue of orange or green. At the school gates or pulling...
Fin to finning
Dec 6, 2009 12:26am
The Shark Savers organisation has a simple but effective idea to combat the revolting practice of shark finning for the ever-popular, though tasteless, shark's fin soup. The shark fin trade, which by the kilo can be more lucrative than selling cocaine, exists to service the demand; changing people's minds is...
Charmless garments: 2
Nov 28, 2009 8:00pm
I have more than one good reason to loathe the second item in the series, but I confess that what seals their fate from my unbalanced perspective is their strong association with a certain marketing person of my acquaintance: a bleached blonde harpy ("as I came up to Mathers Inn/Three...
Christmas bizarre
Nov 23, 2009 3:54am
Walking through Stanley on Saturday morning I saw a large sign proudly advertising CHRISTMAS TREES FROM THE USA. Yes, that's right: someone is flying Christmas trees thousands of miles (from Oregon, or Wisconsin, to Hong Kong) so that buyers can say that their trees are American. There is something so...
Fake bake
Nov 6, 2009 10:21pm
There's something a bit unsettling about the recent resurgence of cupcakes. I declare an interest, or rather the lack of it: the cupcake promises much but doesn't deliver, and I don't really like them anyway. But I instinctively distrust the way we're all supposed to be cupcake eaters now: sold...
They do things differently there
Oct 30, 2009 9:33pm
Mark T was slightly younger than me and attended posh boys' school the Edinburgh Academy (the uniform, tweedy green, often with brown leather elbow patches, epitomised the school). I met him at a party in the year when the record du jour was Sade, Diamond Life (1985). I was 16...
Charmless garments: 1
Oct 20, 2009 7:26am
This is the first of an occasional series on charmless garments. Toweringly high on the list? The spandex poloneck. A garment that suits no one and besmirches everyone. Why would any woman with more than a completely flat chest ever squeeze herself into such a mockery? The neck segment clings...
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