As if a single day could lay claim to a transition so elusive, the vernal equinox traditionally marks the first day of spring. By any other measure, spring has been here for a while. I first sensed it on a morning in late February, long before there was any real warmth to the sun and [...]
I’ve been watching the debate in the US over the heavy-handed and inappropriate Stop Online Piracy Act, and fully support the actions taken yesterday by Wikipedia and others. Even allowing for what seems to be a certain amount of unsubstantiated rhetoric, the potential consequences of the Act on freedom of speech are alarming, to say [...]
An unfortunate incident over the summer spelled the end for my iPhone, and with it a communication route that for the past few years I had pretty much taken for granted. For the first few days, managing without it felt like the metaphorical losing a limb, but sitting in the pub a couple of evenings [...]
Old folk customs have a surprising tenacity in post-industrial Britain. It sometimes seems that rural traditions, like nature itself, have a latent irrepressibility, springing up incongruously through the fabric of modern society. A few years back I read an account of a largely forgotten custom in which children wore a sprig of oak to school [...]
It seems strange to be writing a post like this so early in the year but the recent warm weather has got me thinking about summer. Stepping out of the door this morning, the stillness of the pre-dawn air rekindled a memory from last year—almost dreamlike in its strangeness—of walking through Tenby at 3am, a [...]