The course of pantoums

8 May

At a community meal at my church the other night, someone read out a pantoum poem. It reminded me that I wrote a pantoum poem myself, back when I was in school, and I thought it was rather good. In fact, I still do, so I’m going to inflict it on you.

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Snooker potty

2 May

I’m told that one of things that is endearing about me is that I am obsessed with strange things. So in the hope that this is true, I’m going to bang on about one of those things here – snooker, and specifically the World Championship. If you find snooker about as interesting as I find cricket (slightly less interesting than reading flat-pack instructions in a language I don’t speak), feel free to skip.

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The plural of Bible

12 Mar

Yes, the plural of Bible is Bibles (although “bible” in itself comes from the Greek word for “books”, which is a plural already). But the way of developing the plural of Bibles is apparently being a Christian for a long time.

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Woman Alive podcast

5 Feb

I appeared on a Woman Alive podcast last year, talking about sex trafficking and the End Demand model, and it has finally gone live.

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Proper (names) etymology

28 Jan

I love etymology, which is the study of the origins of words. I’m fond of languages and linguistics in general, so that makes sense.

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My year in review – 2024

29 Dec

It feels like I’ve had my head down all year and barely registered what I’ve been up to, so I’ve just scrolled through my calendar, photos and blog to find out what I actually did do this year!

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The Great Gingerbread Tournament

20 Dec

As you probably know, I make a gingerbread structure every Christmas. And as you may also know, I love the Snooker World Championship. This year, these two passions have been combined:

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Ramblers Round Glasgow

18 Nov

It’s been a while since I did any talks related to Hugh Macdonald, the Victorian Glasgow journalist whose book I annotated in 2022. Last year seemed full of them, when the new edition had just come out, but this Saturday was the first in a long time, and possibly the last (although I’m still open to invitations).

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New book! And article.

31 Oct

You wait months for some new writing from me, and then two come along at once.

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Books of the year

25 Oct

I’ve just provided Shepherd (a book rating site) with my top three books from October 2023 to September 2024. (Weird cut-off points, I know.)

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