ofthewedge

rooting around for grubs in diverse soils

  • Post Brexit EU Diplomacy Redux 

    Council meeting  Member states: We have a problem. Commission: Let’s do something. We will propose a solution in the European interest. France: I agree we must do something in the European interest but national governments should be in the lead. [i.e. France.] Germany: I welcome the Commission proposal but we will need to study details… Read more

  • Es riß! (Notes on everything)

    When Trump was sworn in as President yesterday it started to rain on Capitol Hill, raining on the modest throng of snowflakes and deplorables clustered on the first five segments of white tarpaulin along the National Mall, barely reaching the Smithsonian Information Centre, so far as I could tell. The rain was a sign of… Read more

  • This is a really really great blog post. I mean really. I mean there are a lot of blogs out there, and some of them are good. But this one is just, you know, so great.

    There is no document of civilisation that is not at the same time a document of barbarism Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History A while ago when it became clear that Donald Trump was going to secure the Rublican nomination for president, a friend of mine from Croydon offered a striking parable of… Read more

  • A radical Labour keynote speech on the UK and the EU

    [This is what Her Majesty’s Leader of the Opposition should be saying. Yes I know I’m biased but it helps to get it off my chest. The blame for the 23 June debacle lies primarily with Cameron, but secondarily with the ineptitude of the current Labour Party.] Brexit means Brexit. Except that no one knows… Read more

  • Let’s remain. Remain to complain

      Your prophets are like jackals among ruins. Ezekiel 13:4 I wrote three years ago that a plebiscite might lance the boil of the EU’s perceived undemocratic illegitimacy. But the choice needed to be on a clear prospectus: what are we actually voting for or against? What is going on in the UK at the moment… Read more

  • Daily bread

    I feel for all of you still reeling from the threatened vaporisation of the BBC online recipe collection. So to tap into the Zeitgeist here’s one that I guarantee will endure through all of cyber eternity: 1. Take one baguette ‘a l’ancienne or other crusty* loaf. 2. Stuff it with as much  rocket, water cress, young spinach and other bitter or peppery herbs… Read more

  • Notes on Middlemarch

    That Whitsun, I was late getting away… Philip Larkin I have written before about May’s skip-in-the-step. Over two or three weeks from mid-April the world turns green, a callow lime, then in another two or three weeks in mid-May the earth gets very warm, retaining that moist dawn chill.  Time was I would feel an… Read more

  • St Syrian’s Day

    How far that little candle throws its beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. April 23rd: St George’s Day and the Birthday of the Bard. We share George, who was a Syrian, with Portugal, Romania, Georgia, Malta and Gozo. It is a day to raise pints of ale in honour of True… Read more

  • Football in Brussels

    Tomorrow my team plays ‘La STIB’, La Société des Transports intercommunaux de Bruxelles, the public transport service, whose first football XI is composed of grizzled Moroccan tram drivers evincing a compelling blend of truculence, modest technical ability and comedy play-acting. We have had several memorable encounters with la STIB over the years, like when they forced us… Read more

  • Art

    My three-old is inclined to arrange objects in a line at regular intervals, a series of temporary installations which she invariable calls ‘a train’. Last night’s ‘train’ rested on what we can assume to be a ‘track’ of a beige, two-metre strip of paper, punctuated by foam packaging which we may consider represent sleepers, one of which bore an… Read more