Recent Posts

• August 19, 2022

  I Live in Canada Now

  Good evening, as of yesterday, I now live in Canada. I have designs on writing a large series along the lines of “The UK, A Retrospective 2011-2022” for the benefit of absolutely nobody other than myself. But for now, I live in Canada.

• March 13, 2022

  The Journey to the West

  The day before my birthday - that is, the day before yesterday - I finished the complete translation of The Journey to the West, having got it as a birthday present the previous year. One of the four great works of classical Chinese literature, and the second of the four I’ve read, after Dream of the Red Chamber (the other two are the Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, for the future).

• January 14, 2022

  Hearts

  What’s going on with everyone’s hearts? I’m mostly seeing this in the context of football, but is that just the most high profile?

• January 06, 2022

  Priorities

  Not doing resolutions this year, or maybe I am but in a way that makes it more vague. The year is six days old and I’m trying to figure out what my priorities are. The big looming thing in the middle of it is a move to Canada in August and all of the colossal life events - selling the flat, shipping the cats, finding a new school, possibly keeping my job?, starting from scratch with bank accounts, driving, credit rating, utilities, everything else - kind of puts “run 200km every month” in the shade (1).

• January 01, 2022

  The Wizard of Oz

  The 4 year old got a book of various bedtime stories for Christmas, and one of them is the Wizard of Oz. They’re all truncated and simplified, but in this edition of Oz, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion make it to the Wizard and he’s just… legitimate. He gives them brains, heart and courage and sends them on their way. (He also sends Dorothy to assassinate another Wicked Witch).