Devenish

Knossos, Crete This time last week I was in Rethymnon, Crete, to give a talk about nominative case in Irish English and Late Middle English to an expert workshop audience . Concerning the talk itself, it was an instance (pun avoided) of "least said, soonest mended" – an unfashionable, and probably unhelpful proverb. Yet, in addition to discovering how outdated my theoretical knowledge had become, I did learn many useful things. Ironically, all of these lessons are even older than my education, and have greater relevance than ever. The trip began and ended with in-flight movies. '...for we will shake him …or worse days endure.' Shakespeare, Julius Caesar The Oryx entertainment system on the Qatar Airways flight from Haneda to Doha offered about 100 movies, almost none of which were watchable unless bad rom-coms or Marvel comics are your thing. The one remarkable outlier, in the Classic Movies section, was the 1953 Brando/Mason/Gielgud MGM production of...

Almost Blue Nearly two months, I got to choose some English language books for my birthday. Books I actually wanted to read, as opposed to what I should be reading. In addition to two Indridason krimis (English lacks this useful German/Dutch word), and a study of Robert Doisneau 'From Craft to Art', I also brought home Dennett's 'From Bacteria to Bach', and two books on Jazz: Ted Gioia's 'History of Jazz', and James Gavin's 'Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker'. While I suspect that Ted Gioa's book, and Doisneau's plates are the only things I'll look at again-though I haven't properly started on the former-it's the comparison of Dennett and Gavins, and their relationship to their subject matter, that interests me most here. First to Dennett's book. I should say straight off that I haven't finished this, in fact, I'm only a third of the way in, and it's quite likely that this is as far as...