Wednesday’s Child: The Joy of Losing
I hadn’t planned on pursuing this line of argument in the present series of posts, I really hadn’t. I thought it far too obvious a direction….
Category: Wednesday’s Child
Wednesday’s Child: Such are the Joys
With apologies to George Orwell, whose memoir my title evokes, in this post I propose to begin uncovering some hidden strings of human character which, not to put too fine a point on it, make the music of happiness
Wednesday’s Child: Motive and Opportunity
Kazakhstan! Kazakhstan! It’s even funnier in Italian: Kazakistan, with more k’s than you see in a lifetime round these parts, all the more absurd because in Russian kazaki is “Cossacks,” a Christian people settled along the Dnieper and the Don….
Wednesday’s Child: Dutch Courage
I often play on a chess site, against opponents from all over the world known only by their monikers, particularly when I have some time on my hands that is freer than my free time. Admittedly this last, as the gentle reader is likely right to surmise, is very nearly always.
Wednesday’s Child: The War that Wasn’t
Some months back a wise friend of mine observed that the frequency with which I sound off on Russia – notwithstanding that I am tied to this troublesome part of the world by “propinquity and property of blood” – is likely to fatigue the gentle reader.
Wednesday’s Child: My Christmas Pudding
My firstborn Nikolai is in Palermo this week to meet his new brother and, perspicaciously, has brought with him a liter of excellent French brandy to mark the occasion. “Your Christmas pudding, Father,” he said, handing over the ornate gold-topped bottle.
Wednesday’s Child: A Blind Spot
A diverting article in the New York Post, of all places, made me look back on nearly half a century of Western handwringing and eyerolling at the mention of the homeland I had lost long before I was born.
Wednesday’s Child: A House of Sand
There’s a lot of dust in the house, visitors from abroad have on occasion admonished us, don’t we ever vacuum? Now, with the newborn child on hand, I fear the criticisms will sound yet more insistent and the excuses ever more feeble. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and by the way when are you planning to get the baby vaccinated?
Wednesday’s Child: An Old New Order
A university friend of mine, Peter Baldwin, whose book on the pandemic I mentioned here some months back, has just come out with another. The title is Command and Persuade: Crime, Law, and the State across History. Were I a libertarian, it would always sit on my bedside table, next to a tome of Ayn Rand and a sepia print of the Unibomber in a silver frame.
Wednesday’s Child: King Kongtext
I realize the above pun leaves much to be desired, but I was in an exceptionally jolly mood last week. I had come across a ridiculous article in The Atlantic which straightaway I knew would give my next post its subject and meaning, and the headline above it was “Vladimir Putin’s Waning Tolerance for Art.” Gosh, I thought, mentally addressing the author of the article, you say waning tolerance for art like it’s a bad thing.
