A Londoner of American extraction has launched an attempt to get London commuters talking to each other. If you’ve ever travelled on the London Underground, you’ll know the issue. Commuters studiously avoid making eye contact let alone conversation. Any communication (such as “that seat is reserved for disabled people”) that can be mimed is mimed. From my limited experience elsewhere… Read more »
Question. What do you do with a dead feral cat? The answer depends on a number of factors, such as “Apart from being dead, is it in good shape?” (quite literally!) and “What talents and skills do you possess that are compatible with disposal of a dead cat?” If you’re a taxidermist, I guess you’d stuff and mount it (no,… Read more »
There are lots of idioms we use without thinking. We learn them in our youth, don’t question them all our lives, and rely on them for something to say in our dotage. Most of the time, we know when to use a phrase, and maybe have some clue about how it may have come about, but once in a while,… Read more »
…is like a lifetime in any other place (to paraphrase the lyrics of a 10cc song). I admit it. I hate opera. Like the musical, it’s a pointless and unrealistic art form. Grown-up people singing at the top of their voices to someone standing not three feet away (or worse, in their arms)—declaring undying love (thus telling us they’ll be… Read more »
l’Académie Française has just announced that a set of 2,400 proposed changes to spellings and punctuations will be rolled out in school text books in the upcoming academic year. My knowledge of the Académie is not that great, but if I’m not mistaken, this is tantamount to revolution, not evolution. Apparently, these 2,400 changes affect approximately four percent of the… Read more »
The concept of a bad dress rehearsal for a play being the harbinger of a good opening night (and vice versa) has always puzzled me. This week, I had the opportunity to collect some data on the topic, so I thought I’d write and share a journal, then examine the saying. As I write this, the theatre group I belong… Read more »
(The mission of this blog is to provide articles that address some facet of the arts and culture. Sometimes the connection is tenuous—occasionally, it’s a-l-m-o-s-t invisible. Although the context of the underlying subject matter is global, this article is geared towards the arts and culture elements of that subject. My support for the entire initiative is, at this point, wholehearted… Read more »
Dewdney Players, the community theatre group that I belong to, is rehearsing hard for a production of a pantomime version of Cinderella. In Canada, the genre is referred to as “British pantomime”, presumably in an effort to plausibly deny ownership or association. Many would regard this is a wise strategy. Pantomime has a long history, during which it evolved from… Read more »
Note: I have tried to write this in a way that won’t cause offence to most people. It does not contain any “bad” swear words until the very last line, but alludes to them several times. During my research for this article, I was shocked to discover that there is a significant and very vocal body of people whose opinion… Read more »
Are you one of the old school that laments the use of abbreviations and picture symbols in communications? The folk over at Oxford Dictionaries clearly aren’t. Their 2015 Word of the Year is… . Yep. That’s right. It’s an emoji, and its official name is “Face with Tears of Joy”. It was chosen, because – and I quote – “[it]… Read more »