The Long and the Short of It

I’ve been gradually reading The Amateur Emigrant and Across the Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson, taking me halfway through a volume of his writings about America (next up is The Silverado Squatters). Edinburgh bookshops often have old hardbacks of his lesser-known works, and they’re entertaining stuff. This passage struck me, in light of current American resistance to ditching the penny and rounding prices up or down to the nearest five cents like Australia does...

Captive Audience

Hmm, kicking off a new year with an entry about being ill really wasn’t the best plan. All my subsequent ideas for posts have revolved around illness: severity of, duration of, memories of, patheticness during. But when you’ve finally recovered from six days during which you didn’t even leave the flat once, and a further six spent getting back to normal, the last thing you want to do is relive it all in writing. It’s not even like you have a backlog of stuff written during the break, because all you’ve been capable of is reading. And listening to music. And watching DVDs.