short diatribe – toby wallis

A bookshop so good it furnished me with a wife

So it turns out that my local Waterstone’s is closing down after all. It moved in to share a unit with HMV a while ago and now with HMV closing down there is nowhere for it to go. Needless to say, I think this is a shame. I made a concerted effort to buy myContinue reading “A bookshop so good it furnished me with a wife”

Penguin’s Great Ideas and the Eradication of the Foreword

I’m usually late to the party when it comes to exciting new things. By the time I discover the author, or hear the band, or whatever, there will already be a large body of work behind them and a fanatical group of followers will have already formed. I’m used to it now, being one stepContinue reading “Penguin’s Great Ideas and the Eradication of the Foreword”

I’ll try anything twice

For years I didn’t like tea. But even though I knew I didn’t like it, I really wanted to. So every now and then I would make myself a cup of tea and take a few tentative sips. I’d do this about once a year, hoping to discover that I had developed a taste forContinue reading “I’ll try anything twice”

My new favourite part of the week

I used to be a real night owl. I’d stay up till 2 or 3am any time I could. In fact, unless I had some impetus to get up early the next day, it wouldn’t even occur to me to go to bed until that sort of time. Friday nights were my favourite. A greatContinue reading “My new favourite part of the week”

Why I can’t speak French

The worst element of PE classes in school was not that it forced physical activity on otherwise bookish, Nintendo-based children, such as I was. It wasn’t the ritual humiliation. It wasn’t the prison style showers. It was that no would tell me the rules. It was one of the oddest paradoxes of school that anContinue reading “Why I can’t speak French”