Category: Wednesday’s Child

Like those time-lapse nature photographs that show the flower bud opening into a full-blown blossom only to shed the petals one by one in a matter of seconds, each successive visit to London reveals an acceleration of its decomposition. We may be horrified by the ravages of time on the features of an old friend when we meet a him after many years on different continents, but should his face have the same effect on us after a mere month’s absence, then either we need better glasses or else we’re looking at a picture of Dorian Gray. The scandal upon...

There is something out there, in the depths of the cyberworld, called TripAdvisor, and it occurs to me that modern culture increasingly resembles it.

The idea of the melting pot, in my view, has done more to harm the United States than any other. There are probably as many foreigners per capita in Britain as in America, but society there encourages them to keep to themselves, to stick to their aboriginal ways and exotic garb, to cross the stage every once in a while – extravagantly costumed and, as it were, becomingly inscrutable – instead of going after lead roles.

My son has written to me from London. This alone shows how much he was affected by the spectacle he had just witnessed, since young people today only ever write WhatsAp messages or graffiti, depending on their economic status and social origin

I’ve scarcely mentioned the Salisbury poisonings here, though the story is interesting not only from the geopolitical, but also from the social and cultural point of view.  Let me fill in some of the blanks.

On the last day of August a momentous event took place, a historic meeting of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople with his Moscow counterpart.  Prompted by that encounter was yesterday’s convening of the Holy Synod, which will conclude its deliberations and publish its resolutions tomorrow.  A great new schism is in the offing, undoubtedly good news for all true Orthodox believers.

Exult, rejoice!  What better way to celebrate eyesight regained, or at least not yet irretrievably lost, than by eating ice cream?  At any rate, that’s what my wife was saying as she dragged me to the “tenth edition” of something called the “Sherbeth” Festival del Gelato Artigianale,

I’m writing this while sporting dark sunglasses in the style of Ray Charles, or maybe even of Milton, raised from the dead to headline an Armani eyewear advertising campaign.  The trouble with my eyes, apparently, is caused by age – Dr. Jeffrey Heier, a famous Harvard Medical School ophthalmologist, apparently, has published a treatise entitled The Aging Eye – but I confess I attach far greater symbolic significance to this, one hopes transitory, malady.  Indeed, why stop at Milton, when one up the stakes and can go for Homer? Technically the thing that’s been happening to my eyes is called...

A good case can be made for the futility of all arguments, starting with the domestic kind and ascending to the theological, but if one finds oneself debating the color of the sunset – which one’s opponent sees as mauve while it’s obviously purple – I suppose that’s life and no harm done.  It’s different when the subject is politics, something I haven’t argued about since university.  To be sure, I’ve made my views known in writing and in conversation, but a proper argument depends less on exposition than on rebuttals, which are used to corner the opponent and, if...

“I’ll have an espresso. No garlic, please.” What, does the gentle reader think that this is a foolish thing to add?  That it’s absurd and unnecessary?  Not in London it isn’t, because here anything’s possible.  I mean, the people here have invented something called a “double espresso,” which has no greater right to existence than a double car, a double umbrella or a double wife.  In Italy, if you want another coffee, you may ask for it, but the whole existential machinery of the thing is set up in such a way that a “double espresso” is patently a nonsense...