Nobody in Britain who finds themselves compelled to catch the train – whether on a regular, intermittent, or entirely haphazard sort of basis – can doubt for one moment the incompetence of the present privatised system. Trains are routinely late and delayed en route for a whole litany of reasons passed off as the whims of a cruel fate. Perhaps something has…
Frank Ocean’s sophomore album, the follow-up to 2012’s wildly acclaimed channel ORANGE, was first teased all the way back in 2014, but a July 2015 release date came and went without a trace of the new music. Fans were left with many questions and mouths agape, and it took another year for the murky picture to become spattered with more…
These days it seems more than ever, you can’t countenance a healthy lifestyle if you’re not willing to eat up all your greens. And it’s not only the vegetarians who are saying it: while nobody can agree quite how many vegetables we ought to be eating each day, everyone is unanimous that it must be at least several. Beans and…
No sign of Spring! Florentine sentinels from icy campanili watch for a sign— Lorenzo dreams to awaken bluebirds Ariosto sucks his thumb. Michelangelo sits forward on his bed . . . awakened by no new change. Dante pulls back his velvet hood, his eyes are deep and sad. His great dane weeps. No sign of Spring! Leonardo paces his unbearable…
It should go without saying that true moderates would never hire a firing squad to dispatch of their enemies, much less turn the guns on members supposedly of their own party, nor would they set fire to their shared accommodation and squeal with delight as they found themselves immolated by the flames. But the self-described moderates of today’s Labour Party have…
My husband of fourteen long and briefly joyous years suddenly left me last month for a male circus hooker. He spends his time between the arms of his lover and more menial tasks, such as cleaning out the lion cage and refilling the clown’s squirting water flower. And while part of me admires him for it, the situation has hardly…
Did you think that joining the army meant a life of sodomy at the hands of your bedfellow, while you wait around forlornly in the meek hope that one day you might shoot or be shot by someone you don’t know? In fact the army also means being yelled at until the spit drips down your face, crude banter and environmental…
Poles and Muslims find themselves overwhelmingly under attack, with the brave perpetrators especially targeting Muslim women as they daub buildings with graffiti and subject individuals to verbal and physical assault. After working for years in the country, filling jobs the natives won’t touch, people from Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Nepal, and Albania – to name just a few – find themselves seized…
(Dedicated to the End of the Dictionary) A xylographer started to cross the sea By means of a Xanthic Xebec; But, alas! he sighed for the Zuyder Zee, And feared he was in for a wreck. He tried to smile, but all in vain, Because of a Zygomatic pain; And as for singing, his cheeriest tone Reminded him of a…
Summer is supposed to be a time of high spirits, of ice cream and sandy beaches, of mood-boosting serotonin and bone-benefitting vitamin D. And yet some spend months dreading the coming of the sunny season, because social customs in the West indicate that the hotter it gets, the less clothes we should use to cover our modest areas. Inevitably this leads to…
