Funfare for the Common Man

We’ve made it to the end: Part 10 (of 10) of my August 2020 Challenge.  Where do we go from here? If you’ve missed any of the previous 9 parts, a recap: Part 1: A decade in quotations: Part 1 (of 10) of the August 2020 Challenge Part 2: My readers ask, I answer: Reader Mailbag, part 1 Part 3: We live in a haunted house Part 4: The Joy of Getting Away From It All Part 5: Looking for truth in all the wrong places Part 6: From the wilds of Western Ukraine to the wild 1970s Soviet Union: Yaremche v Tiraspol Part 7: My wife tried to kill me: [mis]adventures in the Carpathians Part 8: Why my language skills suck: Part 1 Part 9: Why I speak such lousy Ukrainian – even after 10 years in Kyiv So what comes next? First, a quick English lesson: the past simple versus the present perfect. This should be easy for most of you. Compare: This pandemic period was difficult. This pandemic period has been difficult. Are they both correct? No. In the first example, the use of the past simple – was ...

9pm every night, after the little one is tucked in for the night With apologies to Gabriel García Márquez After last week’s heavy theme of the [potential] doom and gloom of the future, this week will be a different kind of heavy: heavy on links, light[er] on commentary.  If there’s one thing this quarantine is doing to people – me, especially, but if Twitter is anything to go by, many of us – it’s sending us down all sorts of nostalgia rabbit holes. You know, I’m not really sure if we can go down nostalgia rabbit holes, but you get the idea. I’ve been down this…road before, just a fortnight or so ago with my ‘Mixtape’ post. That, along with some comments from old friends, has really kicked the music nostalgia urge into overdrive, and I’m trying to put together a music-themed post. But I’m struggling to find the right angle. So in the interim, let’s focus on links and love.  As in, this is about the point in the quarantine, if you haven’t reached it already, where tempers are r...

I figured this is as good a time as any to kick off my latest little ‘project.’ It’s been in the works for a few months but I’ve been putting it off. It was prompted by a student who asked me, quite some time ago, what else I read besides books. I think I was complaining when I said that I ‘only’ read 40-50 books a year and if I gave up reading articles (news, business, sport), I could probably double that. She then asked ‘what the hell do you read and where do you find it?’ and I sort of rambled off a few websites and sources of inspiration. Here we are, many months later, and I’m finally getting round to it. If social media is anything to go by, seems like people need something to keep them occupied at the moment, and reading is always a good idea – right? – so I am more than happy to oblige. (So much for my ‘try to be more social’ resolution for 2020!) Loyal and devoted readers will know that I’m forever making empty promises that I have little chance of keeping....