Dena Attar

If you’ve ever been south of the river in London you’ll probably have seen the Faraday Memorial, even if you didn’t realise it. The Memorial is the big steel cube in the middle of what used to be a traffic roundabout at Elephant and Castle. The area around it is now more pedestrian-friendly. It looks…

New living metaphor seen in the wild

May 9, 2017

Texts

Linguistic fun, Living metaphors

Hope you all caught this bit of news from the local elections last week. The Liberal Democrats took overall controll of Northumberland County Council although the result was at first a dead heat in terms of seats – 33 to the Conservatives, and 33 to their opponents combined. The South Blyth ward was still tied after two…

Throwing out your sourdough

Apr 13, 2017

Living metaphors, Texts

Matza, Passover, Sourdough

Happy (late) Passover, Easter, and springtime. We are part way through the season for eating the bread of affliction, which is a good name for matzah if you have thrown out all your bread, flour and other baked goods and are eating factory-made sheets of unleavened bread (aka cardboard) for a week. Here’s what you’re…

The London elephants

Apr 6, 2017

London, Texts

Elephant and Castle, London

This post is by request as I’ve been told the blog needs more about elephants. There has been terrible news for the last fortnight so I’m happy to turn to a topic that at least one reader might actually enjoy. London is one of the blog themes, so these aren’t just any elephants. They’re London elephants.…

Fighting on the Internet

Mar 31, 2017

Experts, Internet research, London

Fake News, London, Oxford Internet Institute

This week I’m taking down Google and annoying Mac users (not intending to annoy but I reckon it will happen). Here’s Google looking shy. It’s a longer post as so much fighting over the Internet happened in March. First up, on March 1st the government published the latest UK digital strategy. It got little coverage…