Britain

Signs of the Times 3: Beverley Past, Present (and future?)
The town of Beverley, ten miles north east of Hull in Yorkshire’s East Riding, offers a wonderful combination of tradition and modernity, progressivism and conservatism, as you can somewhat tell...
Read More
August 21, 2008

Signs of the Times 2: Hornsea Present
Or, as Morrissey called it, The Seaside Town They Forgot To Close Down. For some reason (apparently the fish and chips), we keep going back there. While I was in...
Read More
August 20, 2008

Signs of the Times 1: Yorkshire Past
Just back from two lovely weeks in the UK. (Lovely apart from the weather which, even by the standards of my childhood, was particularly wet and windy. Fortunately I went...
Read More
August 20, 2008

Captions of the Week
The Guardian seems to have some legal fear of using the word “arrest.” These are the captions they used in a story about the, um, Final Piss-Up on the London...
Read More
June 2, 2008

Who’s Been Reading Porno?
Seriously, this story reads like a scene straight out of Irvine Welsh’s return-to-Trainspotting novel, Porno,. except that there appear to be two Begbies committing mayhem. And it’s set in Edinburgh,...
Read More
July 20, 2007

European Report #6: Round(about the)Houses and Online Concerts
Back where this whole European trip thingy got going for me, at The Roundhouse in Chalk Farm. The famed North London theatre and live venue, after suffering through years of...
Read More
October 31, 2006

European Report #5: Comedy Calls
It’s not often I spend a late Friday night indoors by the TV, especially in the UK. But such was the case in Beverley, when we found ourselves home from...
Read More
October 26, 2006

European Report #4: Wine and Dine
The UK continues to disprove its former international reputation for the worst food in the world. Or, to put it this way, good places to eat are no longer so...
Read More
October 25, 2006