Category Archives: arts

250 today – never roll over, Beethoven!

17 Dec

I know nothing that would equal the Appassionata. I could hear it played every day. Marvellous, supernatural music. When I hear it, I always think, maybe with naive, childish pride: What wonders human beings are capable of accomplishing! Lenin. A quarter-millennium ago … Read More »

Bicycle thieves

23 Nov

Nottingham is in mourning. Millions of the city’s culturalatti awoke this morning sickened and saddened by news that a bicycle of single buckled wheel, chained to a street sign outside a nail bar on the corner of Ilkeston Road and … Read More »

On Rothesay Avenue

18 Oct

Everyone was confused about whether it was real or not real, but it’s an amazing picture, it’s amazing art,’ Surinder Kaur, who runs the AVI Hair & Beauty Salon in Nottingham. I overheard an Asian bloke with his family asking … Read More »

Let’s write a rude limerick!

9 May

In Walking the Erewash I composed a limerick to steer readers past the pitfall of pronouncing the eponymous river as ‘earwash’. Pairing it with ‘very posh’ I thought to spare embarrassment, should ever you find yourself in that neck of … Read More »

Stealing the sun

8 Jan

Caught red handed by his photographer wife as two bemused canines look on, a man in the pay of Vladimir Putin – the Guardian’s Luke Harding has confirmed this – brazenly snatches the sun from an evening sky at the … Read More »

Is my team ploughing?

24 Nov

I don’t suppose this an original thought – what’s so great about originality anyway? – but today it occurred to me that melancholia is a vital part of the human experience, perhaps of Life itself. Those muddy fields by the … Read More »