The Art of Conversation
June 1, 2014
I’ve always had a funny relationship with conversation. I often want to be left alone, to get on with work, read, do the things I like to do, quietly in solitude, and a conversation stops me. Sometimes you can feel trapped in a conversation, finding it dull or uncomfortable, inane and a waste of time, …
What Science Cannot Teach Us
January 17, 2014
If I had a hammer, there’s lots I could do with it. I could crush a walnut, for one thing. But I might hang a picture on the wall, knock a bulge out of my car’s wheel arch, break some toffee, start a carpentry project. I could also use it to bash someone’s brains in. …
Lost and Found in Translation
July 7, 2013
A couple of months ago I had dinner with a professional translator who produces subtitles for film and TV. The conversation led to the complexities of the process. There are difficult judgments to be made all the time, as with any form of translation. Does the word in language A really mean the same as …
Nordic Knitwear – We’re all Scandinavian Now
February 17, 2013
Twenty years ago you have the feeling that if a Danish TV series had been aired in the UK it would’ve involved Scandinavian characters inexplicably speaking English to each other. But the appetite for Nordic noir seems insatiable nowadays, all in its original language and subtitled: Forbrydelsen, Broen, Wallander, Borgen, and so on. And why …
Nothing Really Matters
November 4, 2012
Anyone can see that absence figures just as much in our lives as presence. A deceased loved one causes the greatest sorrow. You see that they are no longer there, in their regular place, doing their regular things. A hole is left in someone’s life. Other absences impact on us. One might be saddened by …
Unspecificity
January 30, 2012
The English language can be infuriating to the creative author. Sometimes it makes no sense. Specificity is a word. Unspecific is a word. One would seem entitled to conclude that unspecificity is a word. When I wrote it into a draft paper the other day, the Word programme gave me the tell-tale squiggly red underlining. …
Travel
December 17, 2011
The old cliché is that travel broadens the mind. Is there any truth in it? There are many ways of learning about cultures and languages but surely the most pleasing is to go and experience it firsthand. Naturally our universities will offer a year abroad as standard for anyone on its language degrees. In time …
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