ofthewedge

rooting around for grubs in diverse soils

  • Elite

    I am always fascinated by photos of famous or brilliant people. Their frozen images are still and powerless. You struggle to visualise them as moving living creatures, impatient to be progressing their private agendas, certain in their own rightness. In my days I have at times trespassed on the personal space of such individuals, and… Read more

  • La Serenissima

    The collection of stones that form the city of Venice has been in place for a long time. Its tired fabric is the familiar Italian backdrop: flaking walls, stripped facades, stone railing on bridges rubbed smooth as marble from millions of eager hands, proud coats of arms worn almost to indistinction by the centuries, usually… Read more

  • Had we never lov’d sae blindly

    Last night I spent a couple of hours in Scotland House for their Burns Night concert. I knew no one so I floated around for a few minutes eyeing up some photography of the Isle of Muck before a low-slung Weegie beamed over to me. We made polite conversation until a towering old man from… Read more

  • Epiphany #472

    Pre-dawn, standing over the Bialetti, waiting for the second thrust of coffee through the nozzle (why doesn’t it come out on in one go?), I slowly recognised the overture to the Flying Dutchman on the radio, and thoughts cast back to my solitary ramblings in London in the 2000s. One moment that sticks is the… Read more

  • Yes, Madame la Commissaire

    One of the half-truths about the EU is that it’s very hierarchical. In fact, as far as the Commission is concerned, it’s a very flat management structure, with only three formal tiers of management, whereas in the UK civil service you might have a dozen of them. Directors-General are in charge of the department, and… Read more

  • On shopping

    I hate shopping. Unless it is for books, food or drink. Browsing from shop to shop is not a leisure activity; it is a form of penance. Loitering in a shop makes my back hurt. Loitering in a gallery or museum, at least there is the consolation that your mind may be expanding while your body aches. With shopping, you are conscious of time… Read more

  • It’s just a shame it’s in Belgium, really.But then you figure if it wasn’t in Belgium,if it was somewhere good,there’d be too many people coming to see it.It would spoil the whole thing

    On Sunday night we watched In Bruges, an amusing, slightly saccharine movie, a bit spoiled by overcooked anti-americanism and stylisation of pretty Flemish girls with an improbable command of colloquial English. The star turn is Ralph Fiennes’ anguished ramrod Mr Big character, Harry Waters. His facial expression, while listening to Ken unpack his personality over a… Read more

  • This sceptic isle

    Euroscepticism is an English problem not a UK problem. And, I would venture, it is even more accurate to view this as an English non-urban white issue. It stems from a latent sense of superiority and xenophobia, in spite of the fact that our economic and political clout has been steadily declining for over a century, and… Read more

  • Summer smiles, astonished and feeble

    Yesterday afternoon was spent on the green fringes of Brussels, first playing football at our home pitch near the wooded farmlands between Overijse and La Hulpe, then joining the Polish ladies around the Étangs de Boisforts. Mum, soft blond-topped, was pushing the stroller along the bank of the lake into the sunshine, when I arrived,… Read more

  • All bright and glittering

    Late last night I hired a Boris bike from our lodgings on Long Lane, Borough, and pedalled through the drizzly neon streets, passing St George the Martyr, curving along Marshalsea Street, onto Southwark Street, its course paralleling that of the Thames, on my right the site of the monstrosity which was St Christopher House where… Read more