Quick walk last weekend

Ken writes:
It was a long weekend and as the weather was nice, Dot and I seized the chance for a quick little walk in the hills. It was a fun day out. We took a series of interesting back roads from our place in Ballybrack to Glencullen and took in a brief section of the [...]

The lowdown

Dot writes: look no further to learn what’s hot and what’s not among the under-three-footers of chez Ken and Dot.
Going up:
* walking. Practically non-stop, with only little pauses for unplanned sit-downs.
* Mummy’s jumpers. They’re brilliant! You can pull them out of the wardrobe and throw them all over the floor! And then, as if by [...]

The Case of the Furtive Footwear

Dot writes: half of my favourite pair of shoes was missing and I couldn’t find it anywhere – not under the sofa, nor kicked off by the desk, nor fallen down the back of the shoe-rack, nor on the floor in any corner I could think of. I eventually discovered it (inspired by who knows [...]

The joy of catalogues

Dot writes: I was just searching the TCD library catalogue for Sex and Sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Carol Braun Pasternack and Lisa M. C. Weston (it contains an essay on virgin martyrs that I’d like to read, in case you want to know). We don’t have it, but we do have the engagingly named [...]

Stripy!

Dot writes: I bought this cute little dressing-gown for Hugh in Southampton. It may have gone to his head.

Look, no hands!

Hospital (warning: long post!)

Dot writes: it’s taken me a while to get round to writing this and I’m not quite sure what note to strike. Serious? Dramatic? Dry? Comically distanced, now I’ve had a few days to get over it and it seems clear that Hugh is very much his normal self? Fortunately I lack the writing skills [...]

Protest

Dot writes: there’s an enormous noise outside Trinity – chanting and drumming and shouting and whistling. It’s the students protesting against fees. I went out to watch with the secretaries from the windows by the School office. First there were mounted police, and then a group of students, but there were surprisingly few of them. [...]

Irish Traffic Lights

Ken writes:
[update: the system I call the 'Irish' system below, is not distinctive of Ireland at all, as is pointed out in the comments.]
Irish traffic lights differ from ones I have seen elsewhere. The light sequence is Green, Amber, Red, Green,… (unlike for instance, the UK where the lights go Green, Amber, Red, Amber, Green, [...]

Why does it matter when languages die?

Ken writes:
The other day I bought K David Harrison’s When Languages die which promises to explain why it is a bad thing when a language becomes extinct. I hope he can. My thoughts on this topic have long been conflicted. On the one hand, I have this feeling that it is a bad thing, [...]

Nervous

Dot writes: I’ve just had a failure of nerve. I spent some time (time I should have used for real work, or for catching up on sleep) writing a post about an article I read recently and pointing out that it is really very rude in a somewhat unfair and gratuitous way about a whole [...]