ofthewedge

rooting around for grubs in diverse soils

  • 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

  • Thoughts on Cana

    The whispering suspension of supernatural breath A poised avalanche trembles on thrusting root That groans and rustles in the dark James Kirkup, For the 90th Birthday of Sibelius Today’s Gospel reading is the wedding of Cana, the traditional first miracle of Christ. In John’s urgent narrative (captured in the incendiary opening bars of Bach’s Passion), already before Read more

  • How I responded to Jeremy Corbyn’s consultation of the membership

    This survey is not about Syria, as you present it. It is about whether to agree with the Tory Government to use our air force to drop bombs on Daesh targets in Syria. There are a lot of men in Syria, especially those fighting for Daesh, who consider it an honour to be cruel and Read more