fourth edition

Pop culture and I have an on-off relationship. I mostly attribute this to growing up in Nowheresville, Denmark, in a family obsessed by 1940s and 1950s American popular entertainment (think Frank Sinatra, Vincente Minnelli films and the Great American Songbook), so when I went to school and was surrounded by kids immersed in current music, [...]

Brief thought after having watch an hour-long interview with AS Byatt on BBC4:
Have the authors whose books I really enjoy shaped who I am as a person, or am I drawn to these writers because of the way I am as an individual?
I need to ponder this and might return to this topic sooner rather [...]

.. are condemned to repeat it.
Or, in other words, try reading this news article about Switzerland banning minarets, replace the words “minaret” with “synagogue” and “Muslim” with “Jewish” and then ask yourself what it reminds you of? A simple semantic trick, but a very useful one.
Meanwhile, I have become slightly addicted to Galaxy Zoo. When [...]

It is not often that people are praying for my soul when I’m at knitting group. Tonight was certainly different. We got caught up in evangelical Christians protesting the play Jesus Queen of Heaven outside Glasgow’s Tron Theatre which involved the press and some (rather bored) policemen. As odd as the praying thing was, it [...]

My autumn/winter mitts have been blocked and subsequently worn for several days with much pride. It is a stash-busting project too as I used partial skeins of Lett-Lopi and New Lanark DK I had left over from previous projects. What is not to love?
Taking a decent photo of them, however, proved too much for my [...]

Last night the leader of the British National Party was part of the panel on a BBC politics programme. I was glad he got the chance to be on the panel. Last time I checked Britain was a democracy with free speech and I thought it just that the leader of the BNP got a [...]

What does home mean to you?
When I left Denmark in 2006, I spent the last few weeks living out of my suitcase and sleeping on friends’ floors. I liked this sort of transitory existence because I knew I was moving from my old home in Copenhagen to a new home in Glasgow. What I [...]

BBC has a Poetry Season which means I am watching far more TV than I usually do. So far Gryff Rhys Jones has explored why poetry matters, the Orkney poet George Mackay Brown has had his own programme, and last night I got a full hour of Simon Schama and Fiona Shaw reading John Donne [...]

From left to right, going clockwise: Copenhagen pedestrian street (Fiolstræde) with secondhand booksellers, quirky fashion and a Japanese supermarket; typical Danish pedestrian street in Holbæk with parked bikes (and bike helmets); Copenhagen City Hall tower; Mjølnir (Thor’s Hammer) seen at an exhibition on amulets at the National Museum; cloudy skies over a field in north-west [...]

Many years ago I read A.S. Byatt’s The Game – a novel about two sisters and the rivalry between them. The book asked questions about the rights of a writer to blur the line between fact and fiction: when could you use your family in your book and when did you have to start inventing? [...]