Machine mugging

I put my sixty cents in the machine and request a Snickers. (tangential rant: When I was a child this bar used to be called Marathon; a name which conjures up sport and stamina and maybe ancient Greece and war too. Then they changed the name to Snickers; which for me sound likes “sniggers”, or [...]

Browsers

I love bookshops. I hate bookshops. I love browsing, making discoveries, and simply taking pleasure in the knowledge that such a variety of interesting and beautiful books is available to me. I hate seeing so many books I want to read and then thinking of the piles of books sitting on the shelves at home, [...]

Could you be a little more specific?

“The Matses are a 2,500-strong tribe, and they live in the tropical rainforest along the Javari river, a tributary of the Amazon. Their language, which was recently described by the linguist David Fleck, compels them to make distinctions of mind-blowing subtlety whenever they report events. To start with, there are three degrees of pastness in [...]

Your correspondent

“She was funny. Yet despite my feelings for her, I realised that I would have preferred a letter to her presence. Is this pathology due to the predominance of written correspondence in my life? Rare are those whose physical presence is preferable to one of their letters – assuming, of course, that they have a [...]

Le Chalet de la Foret

Last night we drove a long and winding road through the deep dark woods south of Brussels to get to Le Chalet de la Foret (two Michelin stars). It’s housed in a rather imposing building, and the interior is a familiar mix of blinding white walls, spotlights, modern art and elegantly minimalist floral arrangements. Inside [...]

[insert name]

On two separate occasions in two different jobs (one fairly recent, i.e. about 20 minutes ago) I have had to deal with someone who thinks that all human communication should be standardized, codified and made as free of variation and spontaneity as possible. For these people, each email sent should adhere strictly to a set [...]

Silence, please

Visiting Lake Orta over the holidays, we took a trip out to the Isola San Giulio, home to a Benedictine monastery and very little else apart from a few houses and a gift shop. As you get off the boat a sign welcomes you to the island and reminds you to shut up and be [...]

Lunch and dinner in Piemonte

Every time we fly to Italy we pass over the lakes in Piemonte, and every time it looks pretty and enticing. This Christmas we finally got to spend a day there. We didn’t make it up to Lake Como where Anakin and Padmé first kissed in Attack of the Clones, but to the smaller Lake [...]

Window shopping in Genoa

Shopping in the old quarter of Genoa is always a pleasant experience, as the warren of narrow, winding alleyways hides a multitude of tiny specialist shops, many of which are Ali Baba’s caves of exotic foodstuffs, equipment and knick knacks. Even if I don’t always want to buy the stuff, it’s usually fascinating to look [...]