Funfare for the Common Man

History really does repeat itself. It wasn’t funny then, it isn’t funny now, but has reached theatre-of-the-absurd proportions. For long-time loyal readers, this is all familiar ground, covered multiple times before. But let’s start from the beginning. Or rather, now: as most of you know, I am here in Ukraine. You might be aware that Ukraine is in the news rather a lot these days. Or rather, these hours. Let’s rewind: I spent much of my childhood, much of the 80s and early 90s in Europe, where a slowly simmering Cold War was fizzling out. I didn’t grow up with any type of existential fear, but there was always that looming concern that something might kick off between the US and the Soviets. I grew up in an American military household, and my old man’s mantra was ‘better dead than red’. The Soviet Union, and the lurking threat of communism on our doorstep, was the big enemy. In 1984, just before going on air to give his weekly radio address to the American people, Ronald Reagan said, i...

Just days ago I was contemplating yet another end of summer and reminiscing on summers past, was sitting on the embankment looking out over the water, watching a fisherman wading into the murky waters, up to his waist, calmly and patiently casting his rod into the reeds, when I opened up to the start of chapter 2 of my book and came upon this lovely passage, as if there was an inner spirt in my kindle tapping into my thoughts. My goodness, it was so apt:  ‘Melanie swam like a blind, earless fish in a sea of sedation, where there was no time or memory but only dreams. Summer changed to autumn before she surfaced and lay palely on her bed, remembering.’ The Magic Toyshop , Angela Carter J une 2006, the World Cup in Germany: a fun month in an up-and-down summer I’ve written about the seasons and weather way too many times on this blog over the years and I don’t want to rehash yet again about how much I adore autumn and dislike summer. A very brief summery (sorry): I struggle with heat...

It’s my annual year in review. I think I’ve done one of these every year. Or most years. I don’t remember. In keeping with the spirit of the holiday season last couple of months, which have been oh-so-frenetic, this too will be a rushed, whirlwind recap of what was truly a raucous annus horribilis. And if that makes no sense, that’s because this year hardly made sense. The biggest positive to emerge from 2020? One of my most productive years of reading ever. But that also came at the cost of other things. When people ask ‘how do you find the time to read?’ I answer: ‘because I don’t do most of the stuff I should be doing instead of frittering away my time reading!’ Herewith 2020 in review. The books are a selection of my favourites and highlights. Mercifully, not all of them. January and February: months like any other, for the most part Grand Hotel , Vicki Baum; Flights , Olga Tokarczuk; Love, Poverty and War , Christopher Hitchens; Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation , Michae...

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 ...

‘We are all familiar with the after-the-fact tone – weary, self-justificatory, aggrieved, apologetic – shared by ship’s captains appearing before boards of inquiry to explain how they came to run their vessels aground and by authors composing Forewords.’ ( John Lanchester, The Debt to Pleasure) A Foreword First, I should probably add a [sic] to the quote above, just after ‘authors’. Second, what I am posting below is a very lightly edited little ditty that I wrote specifically for my teenage students a couple of weeks ago. Though it didn’t take me long to write, I’m pretty hard-pressed to find much free time to write these days and so I didn’t want it to go completely to waste. I think (or hope) some of them appreciated it or at least found it mildly interesting, and I even turned into a sort of reading ‘test’. It fit in with the topic of the unit we were studying, the media, and I figured they might have been fed up or bored with my endless crapping on about the ‘good...