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Other Men's Flowers
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Comments on language, literature, politics, the arts and almost anything else, but mostly quotations. "I have gathered a posie of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own" (Montaigne, 1533-1592)
Recent Posts Tagged With 'Personal'
A close thing
It gave me quite a frisson when I realised that the alleged perpetrator of yesterday's attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253 as it descended towards Detroit Metropolitan Airport might very well have been a close friend of mine, ...
A suitable case for treatment
They said that before they give me an ARR next month I must go and see the anaesthetist to find out whether he would be likely to do me any harm, so on Christmas Eve I trotted along to consult him.After checking that I was me and not some impostor he...
Brief but memorable
My initiative in making a telephone call sparked off an unusual encounter I had one night last week. A young Japanese woman answered and asked me to tell her all about myself, which of course I was pleased to do. She was very interested, and it was n...
Knickers
I have been making a survey of unusual names for nether undergarments. My interest in this subject was sparked off by an instruction given to me the other day by a kindly nurse when I went to our local hospital for a small test: "Push your bangers do...
Personal note
When I was born, which was on the same day that the great Cab Calloway recorded "Minnie the Moocher" (Jazz's first million seller), I weighed 2½ pounds. Years later I was told that they left me at the foot of the bed and the doctor said to the midw...
Faites simple
...or, avoid all unnecessary complication and elaboration. This was Escoffier's advice to chefs but it applies to websites as well as it does to great cooking.If you own a restaurant which offers a lunchtime tasting menu at £75 (£6 surcharge if you...
How's that again?
Newspaper headlines are there to catch readers' attention and make them marvel, or at least excite their curiosity. Here are four recent ones which worked on me:Police arrest 21 after woman in tent is injured by lawn rollerTrial shows new drug better...
One thousand up
What to publish for the millenary* post in Other Men's Flowers? How about some pointless statistics such as that every month for five and a half years around fifteen Omfposts (as aficionados call them) have been published, each month's batch containi...
If you live in Spain...
My extreme reluctance to immerse myself in water except when it's in a bath, lightly perfumed and at exactly the right temperature, goes back a long way and was due to some wickedly cruel treatment I received as a child. I never felt that I missed an...
Back from the Orient
Welcome home, Beatrice and Grumio. Fitzrovia was not the same without its Golden Couple....
No Brunel
I have already described why I would never have made an engineer; it is a sad story, but I was cheered recently by reading the biography of a man who did have some talent in this direction but who is remembered chiefly for the many things he construc...
Funny how things work out
As I mentioned the other day, I used to review West End plays from time to time for a chain of provincial weekly newspapers, and once I was sent to Les Trois Mousquetaires at the Piccadilly Theatre. This was a burlesque of 17th century swashbucklers ...
Writing it down
I have never been plagued by superstitious compulsions: I do not feel compelled to walk on (or to avoid walking on) lines in the pavement, or to wash my hands more often than is necessary. But there is one thing which I have forced myself to do from ...
The Public Library smells of galanga
In a comment to a post published in Other Men's Flowers (by mistake) on March 19th, I mentioned a Balinese dancing girl who has become something of an embarrassment to me, and several readers have asked me for further details, preferably salacious on...
And there'll be a raffle too!
I will not say how long ago I left school, except to note that the year was historically important not only for this reason but also because it was the year in which Mr Rajagopalachari was appointed Governor-General of India in succession to Earl Mou...
No news is bad news
In 2005 I lost contact with an internet friend; his blog had disappeared and his email address became inactive. He had set out to travel from Albuquerque to Oaxaca in a camper, and was describing on line, with wit and perception, his adventures and e...
Robert Chambers
Yesterday my wife's nephew died of cancer, aged 41.Known professionally as Wobbly Bob, he was a gifted artist and musician, the guitarist, singer and co-founder with Pete Bennett of a band called Daddy Fantastic, and creator of the cartoon character...
Playing choo-choos
I never wanted to be an engine driver. This showed untypical percipience on my part, for even then I could see that it was a matter of doing a hot, dirty, exhausting, job while under the appalling stress of being responsible for the lives of four hun...
Border incident
Exactly thirty years ago, in December 1978, I took the train from Beijing to Pyongyang. No doubt nowadays it is full of happy tourist parties off for a jolly time with Our Dear Leader in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, but at that time no-o...
Now the pressure is on
One of the advantages of advanced age is that you are liberated from most of the commitments which make the prime of life so stressful—earning money, bringing up children, playing a role in the community, being nice to people and so on. You still g...
A distinguished bunch...
...who achieved fame in a variety of ways but have one thing in common. What was it?Anne Bancroft, Claire Bloom, Alfred Brendel, Leslie Caron, Christopher Chataway, James Dean, Basil D'Oliveira, Lonnie Donegan, Mikhail Gorbachov, Goswell Frand, Larry...
