Richard Wagner was devoted to his King Charles spaniel named Peps, who actually participated in his master’s composing.
Wagner’s biographer H.T. Finck records that Peps constantly sat near Wagner when the composer was at the piano. Sometimes Peps would leap on to the table and peer into Wagner’s face, howling piteously.
I like dancing – who doesn’t? So, one day after feeling as if I could become footloose on the dance floor again, I enrolled for a ballroom dancing class at the local grammar.A legacy of the Fifties and Sixties was that all of us could rock and roll – and even today if you listen to the original of Honky Tonk, your feel an irresistible urge to do it all over again.
Wonder who this could possibly be…
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”
– John Bright
It started with a scattering of day-glo hieroglyphics on our driveway and nine months later ultrafast broadband is up and running at our house.
Installation was anything but ultrafast. Here’s what happened.
Old friends should never be treated like this: interned in sunless corners, jammed upright until their spines crumble; bandaged, but with half their pages inexplicably missing.My books were freed recently by the arrival of our exuberant Westie wallpaperer and so ended up in piles all over the house. But in them we found reunions everywhere.
Jaw-dropping winner of the Kiwi version of London’s Carbunkle Cup (for the ugliest building in the UK) is right here in… yes in one of our prettiest centres, just keep reading…
I tested the kitchen smoke alarm a couple of weekends ago. Baking an apple and boysenberry cake, the topping, dots of butter sprinkled with muscovado sugar, melted, oozed through the dodgy base of my aging spring form tin and began to burn.
The show-prayer fashion was everywhere this year. Why appeal to your maker in the changing-room or tunnel when you can do it front of millions? This is a special God, after all, a biased God, your own personal God who’s here for you, not the other blokes lining up beside you.
By the numbers…
People blink as many as 15 to 20 times a minute, far more than needed to keep our eyes lubricated. So why do we do it?