R4 Afternoon Play
Philip Larkin and soft porn.
The blog of the traveller, observer and writer, Woz.
Happiness is the man with rhythm.
Copyright © 2003-2021, Woz
So Chemical Ali has been hanged for the gas attack at Halabja and other crimes. While I have no sympathy for him, it is ironic that one of the powers behind this is Britain, as it was the Brits who first gassed Iraqis, in the 1920s.
I only discovered this Siegfried Sassoon poem after hearing it put to music (the track being 'The Valleys') by Electrelane in their album 'The Power Out' back in 2004.
Anne Enright on the recession in Ireland. Coming soon to a UK county near you.
The University of Kentucky's Patterson School runs an annual policy simulation. This year it was vampires.
If you ask some people who they would most like to meet, they would say Gandhi, Stalin, Hitler, Alexander the Great, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
As part of my job, I scan the various news feeds coming out of the Valley. Here's one (from Good Morning Silicon Valley) that caught my eye this evening:
If you are leaving work at 17:30 and plan on going on the M25 & M40 for a spell, followed by some x-country slaloming to Henley, then some more twisty-windy hustling to Reading, you should ensure that your wipers work. Mind didn't, and I knew it. OK, things went fine, but they could have gone wrong for me or someone else. What a twat.