Autumn Comes

Well, that’s all then. The week or two of sun in September’s gone, and ‘Summer’ went with it. Not that it makes a lot of difference: it might have been summer according to the tilt of the planet, but I don’t think this region was privy to the information.
Today was one of those mornings. I [...]

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Britain’s last WWI veteran

An interesting article about Harry Patch, Britain’s (the world’s?) last surviving World War One veteran, whose life story has just been published. It seems like he hasn’t entirely forgotten his training:
To help jog his memory, a young major in his party fumblingly demonstrated how to change the magazine. ‘I said: “Major, you’d have to [...]

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Youth Imperialism?

There’s one theme that pops up again and again when I’m writing, even if it’s not a central subject of the piece: aging and being old. Although I’m only in my 20s, I seem to have an affinity for the old. Many of my characters are elderly, and often the narrator in a first person [...]

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Madame Guillotine

I’ve been doing some research about the guillotine for a piece of writing. Which regime do you associate with using the guillotine? France during the Jacobin terror, right? Robespierre and all that. Well, not a bit of it. It turns out the Nazis were quite fond of it. Between 1941 and 1943, they sent 20,000 [...]

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Kurt and Other Old Men

I’ve just heard Kurt Vonnegut has died. I don’t have much to say about it, but I felt like I had to mention it. And so it goes.
What I really wanted to talk about was old men, and old people in general. Today in the street, I walked by as two old, old men passed [...]

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