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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
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| Britons, especially the English, and even especially-er English men, love their tea and their beer. It's the closest they come to having a religion.
But in America on the other hand we have traditionally, since our very beginning, nay even before our very beginning, had a totally different THING about tea, so that now-a-days all hot tea (or, more accurately, vaguely warmish tea) served in America tastes to this ex-Englishman exactly as though it came straight out of Boston Harbour.
Iced tea here is a bit better, just about drinkable, or rather it would be if they didn't flavour it with raspberries or fish giblets or whatever they do.
So that finally I am pushed, protesting, towards American beer, the only thing is that most American beer tastes as... as if it were pre-owned, probably by a little old lady who just used it for shopping.
Of course in some things the British are just as bad as you, but in their own way: English Cream Tea for example: tea, and scones and jam and thick, thick clotted cream and arteries to match—sort of cardiac arrest on a bun. And, sadly, the Pub, home to countless generations of English men, seems of late to be dwindling, with a terrifying percentage of them closing each year, in the face of unEnglishmanly reality shows on the telly and cheap booze in the supermarket. But even in these days of the apparent death throes of the pub, that's where the Briton shines and where we leave you guys in the dust, and talking of dust...
| | Read More... | | I'm sure I don't need to tell you what a Linnæan binomial is, but for the benefit of that ignoramus on the next radio...
| | Read More... | | I was in Half-Price Books the other day... (Oh! and I suppose should explain that Half-Price Books is an excellent chain of secondhand book shops which, if you think about it, is not what you'd expect to find in Texas)... anyway... I was in Half-Price Books the other day, and when I was checking out, the chap behind the counter complimented me on signing my name with the correct hand rather than the right one.
| | Read More... | | I don't know if you are aware of it, but in real life (which is obviously not what I'm doing at the moment) I am a programmer for a large retail chain not unknown to most of you. As a consequence of this I am exposed daily to young women who have connections to the clothing provision trade.
| | Read More... | | The other day I had another of those damned birthday things. I'm not going to admit in public which one, but it set me thinking (even more than the 65 birthdays that preceded it) about the dark forward and abysm of time (as Shagspag probably wishes he'd said in King Lear rather than wasting the thought the wrong way round in The Tempest).
In especial it set set me thinking, by way of that dreadfully upbeat though slime-ly mawkish Browning poem Rabbi Ben Ezra : you surely know it 'Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which...' de dum de dum de de.
| | Read More... | | [sings---sort of]
I cannot get any satisfaction.
I cannot obtain any satisfaction.
And I have tried,
and attempted,
and endeavoured,
and I have striven.
I cannot derive any satisfaction.
[ends---thankfully]
| | Read More... | | The other day, well really quite while ago by the time you hear this, and much to my surprise, someone at work mentioned that yet another round of those Olympic Game thingies was going on in London. They seemed to think that I should be taking an interest since it was being held in the land of my birth, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that A) I had carefully avoided the damn thing by making quite sure that my visit, earlier this year, was most definitely when it wasn't being held, on the grounds of London already being wildly over-crowded even before they shoved a great load of athletes and spectators and what have you into it, and B) that I had, in the time between said avoidily visit and the other-day mentioning, completely forgotten about the damn thing. So I rushed home (well, not immediately, I did wait for my usual knocking-off time) and checked it out on the BBC site so I'd have something to add to the next Olympic mentioning session at work, if there happened to be one.
| | Read More... | | I hate crowds, especially really excited crowds, not to mention the downright hysteria that so often surrounds them, so when I planned this year’s visit to the UK, I made a point of carefully avoiding the crowds and the excitement, not to mention the downright hysteria surrounding the upcoming London Olympics. Foolishly, however, I completely forgot to avoid the crowds and the excitement, not to mention the downright hysteria surrounding the Queen’s Jubilee! Completely missed the fact that my oh-so-cleverly chosen Olympics-bypassing visit would have slap-bang in its middle the entire nation going gaga for a week or more, congregating in vast excited, not to mention downright hysterical crowds, simply because the present Queen is still the present Queen.
| | Read More... | | | We have a saying in England, in situations when, for instance, some chap is failing miserably to awaken the interest of a young lady "Huh! Chance'd be a fine thing." and chance may well be a fine thing, but coincidence is a pain sometimes, and it's funny how it takes over and everything seems to happen all at once. Often disastrously. | | Read More... | | We have, and I'm sure that they are all official, in strict calendar sequence Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, and we even have International Left-Handers' Day in August, on the thirteenth, and then...then just to spoil my sequence. Then... then, though I believe less official, there is the American Pi Day which is also in March, and which does not (as I bet you were thinking) celebrate the movie, or the song, or indeed the pastry, but instead, being held on 3.14, celebrates the famous mathematical constant π of which that date, in American usage, is the first three digits: and I won't embarrass you by adding that there's also a Pi Approximation Day when, using the date expressed in the proper British way twenty-two slash seven, we can celebrate Pi rather more accurately.
But now, at last, and to be a lot more rational than π day and to get us back on track as well, this April the twenty sixth at about about eleven fifteen a.m. we proudly introduce East Anglian History Hour when the whole nation will celebrate the many and great contributions people from my part of the British Isles made to America: not to mention to the World. And I won't mention the World again.
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