Oxford’s canal system is one of the more interesting parts of the county to explore. They certainly look as though they harken from a departed era of red brick and steam powered industry. Nonetheless, they have a good modern role as walking paths, cycling routes, and waterways for the longboats that seem to form a [...]

Today’s bi-hourly deluges precipitated the purchase of an umbrella: not for my own sake, but on account of the constellation of electronic gadgets that now follow me about as I walk a broken bicycle to Cowley, or carry groceries back from Sainsbury’s to Church Walk.
There is a lot of talk these days about combining all [...]

A friend of mine challenged me to come up with the collection of items that I would submit to ‘Desert Island Discs’ - a British radio show in which interview subjects are questioned about what they would bring along to soften the experience of being stranded on a desert island:
“Created by Roy Plomley in 1942, [...]

I bought John Banville’s The Sea in Dublin because I so enjoyed Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire: the last Man Booker Prize winning novel I had read. Actually, I note with some surprise that, upon looking it up, Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize, while Hazzard’s book did not. Nonetheless, from [...]

Being a fairly computer-friendly crew, I am sure many readers will remember the venerable Windows 3.1 operating system. Many will also be likely to remember the greatest game ever produced for that OS: SkiFree, created by Chris Pirih. The game was notable not for graphics or gameplay (your little sprite would descend ski tracks of [...]

Canada’s Green Party elected a new leader today: Elizabeth May, who is described by The Globe and Mail as a “[l]ong-time activist.” The Greens have been around since 1983, usually polling about 5% of the national vote, but they have never had a seat in Parliament.
The electoral situation facing the Greens is not unlike many [...]