June 2013

It is rarely that I go to my local cinema, for the films shown there are generally atrocious. However, I let myself be persuaded to go last night by my neighbours, though the film turned out to be just as atrocious as I had feared, shallow, sentimental, narcissistic, kitsch and boring. My neighbours gamely agreed; but at least we had … [Read on]

Public transport is the great theatre of the world, which is why I always take it (whenever I can) in preference to that frightful contraption, my motor car. You learn so much on public transport; in a car you just lose your temper. This morning at the bus stop, for example, there was an elderly man – three of four … [Read on]

Irritating though conversations on mobile phones may often be to those not involved in them, I nevertheless feel a compulsion sometimes to eavesdrop on them. They can be banal and boring, or they can be entertaining and illuminating. Oddly enough, people speak in public on their mobile phones as if they were surrounded by an invisible sound-proofed chamber. Ease of … [Read on]

Just because an economy as a whole does not grow it does not mean that no activity whatever increases. For example, there are now 4000 professional tattooists in France whereas ten years ago there were only 400. And in neighbouring Belgium last year the number of cases of euthanasia grew by a healthy 27 per cent (no pun intended). It … [Read on]