culture – Strangers on the Shore

“From Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared” – and the women standing up in 2018

No one likes an uxorious man – but as my wife Prof. Senia Paseta is the curator of a new (and not untopical) exhibition about pioneering women, a plug seems very much in order. The exhibition opened this week in Oxford and is called From Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared (Bodleian Libraries events page: FromContinue reading ““From Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared” – and the women standing up in 2018″

Drive to Swindon and find inner peace

Sometimes – well quite often – I come across a little film or piece of writing that identifies something I’ve long felt and articulates it better than I could. This piece from the School of Life, on what some time behind the wheel on the open road does for you, encapsulates why I’ve come toContinue reading “Drive to Swindon and find inner peace”

Queer as false memory syndrome

As I get older – which I gather many other people are also doing – I become ever more interested in popular and, even more so, unpopular folk traditions. Tomorrow is a belter of a day in the folk weirdness calendar: May Day. It’s like a clarion call for every nut job in the landContinue reading “Queer as false memory syndrome”

Blame and its illusions: an RSA Short by Brené Brown

Quite funny this: This is from a talk at the RSA, in which the American sociologist and writer explains the toxicity of blame. Not only is blaming people not usually really about some right-minded demand for accountability, it tends towards the opposite. Seen for what it is: Blame is simply the discharging of discomfort andContinue reading “Blame and its illusions: an RSA Short by Brené Brown”

Signs of life: why qual and semiotics are natural partners

I came across this today by Czech semiotician Martina Olbertova, via Joanna Chrzanowska’s brilliant and generous resource, the Qualitative Mind website (www.qualitativemind.com; follow her on Twitter on @QualitativeMind; Joanna’s site is full of great information and resources for qual researchers and research buyers alike). Olbertova gives an introduction for the skeptical and/or uninitiated to theContinue reading “Signs of life: why qual and semiotics are natural partners”

Breaking Bad: corroding a hole through the top floor of Maslow’s pyramid

I know Breaking Bad is finished but a late suggestion to creator Vince Gilligan – you really should have used this classic by The Nolans as the theme tune: I recently finished a month or so in which I watched all five series on Netflix. This multi-award-winning US drama, for those still unfamiliar with it, isContinue reading “Breaking Bad: corroding a hole through the top floor of Maslow’s pyramid”

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades: The 70s Slumped in front of the tv last night after a long day of fieldwork about energy usage in Worcestershire, I got Peter Hooked into Danny Baker’s pop music o’ the past chat programme on BBC4, Danny Baker’s Rockin’ Decades. Despite the (I have to assume deliberately) naff title, itContinue reading “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”

Music to my ears: Motley Crue to stop

I hate to be negative – it’s usually better to focus on bigging up the good stuff – but I really can’t abide Motley Crue. Nigel Blackwell of the Birkenhead surrealists Half Man Half Biscuit put it perfectly in their song from a few years ago Upon Westminster Bridge: Oh help me, Mrs Medlicott, I don’t knowContinue reading “Music to my ears: Motley Crue to stop”

Have you done the triangular ironing yet?

You can have it fast, good, or cheap. Pick two. Oliver Burkeman’s latest This Column Will Change Your Life piece for the Guardian Weekend magazine is about this formula, or “the iron triangle” as it is sometimes called. Oliver Burkeman in Guardian Weekend: Constraints Can Be Liberating. It encapsulates neatly the problem with imagining you can have itContinue reading “Have you done the triangular ironing yet?”

Dead and not dead: Lou Reed and John Cooper Clarke

Which of these two reformed heroin-addicts and ex-boyfriends of Nico was likely to survive to this century? Neither. BBC4’s reputation for impressive rockumentary continues with a couple of programmes on the iPlayer now (for people in the UK who pay for it) about two wordsmiths, very different personalities but both towering figures of “alternative” popularContinue reading “Dead and not dead: Lou Reed and John Cooper Clarke”