Writing in the Aeolian Islands I wrote my 500th blog on this site a couple weeks ago. In case you’re wondering, it was the one about the Stalin Museum in Georgia. You can search my archives by clicking the little hamburger icon in the menu up top. It’ll open an entire world of options. Anyway, I thought I should take a look back at what I’ve learned from doing this — if anything...
I never would have guessed when I sat down to write Words That Piss Me Off in March 2010 that I was creating a smash hit. Many of the words and phrases which sparked that furious rant were irritating proliferations of business English that made their way into daily use. Don’t get me wrong, they still piss me off. But more recent offences to the English language have their origins in an even more...
How are you coping with being jailed at home? I could do this self-isolation thing for months. It doesn’t bother me at all. Okay, at this time of year I’m missing the biergarten. There’s nothing like a cold draft on a hot summer day after a weekend bike ride. But nothing else has changed for me, apart from not being able to travel and the gym being closed. I realize that’s not the case for normal...
Jenny from Sydney, Australia asked: How did you become interested in writing? I wonder sometimes what came first, the stories or the intention to write them? I think, in a sense, I’ve always lived posthumously. Even when I really got myself into trouble as a kid, part of me knew that the incident I was caught up in would make a great story and that I had to go through with it. I was always...