Two Of A Kind

Governments are like boy bands. All those prime egos jiggling around like sausages in a frying pan. They sweat, they sizzle, they spit- and then one of them goes pop.

Ian Duncan Smith should give Zayn Malik a call,  chill with him a bit, compare notes...

Belloc's House And Mill

Of all the literary big beasts of the Edwardian era Hilaire Belloc is the least well known today. His politics and religion count against him and he mostly produced non-fiction- which has dated. All the same, he wrote beautiful prose and a handful of great lyric poems- and his comic verse is the best of the century.

I like him anyway.

He lived at Shipley in West Sussex. Here's his house- King's Land. It may not look like anything very special but under that modern surface is a medieval farmhouse that was probably built by the Knights Templar.



And here's the mill which stands next to the house. It used to be open to the public but isn't any more. Apparently it served as Jonathan Creek's home in the TV series of the same name.

In Dreams

And now I'm giving people advice in my dreams.

There was this woman who was bewailing her lot and I told her (in so many words)- "Some lives are for achieving things in and others are just for getting through."