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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
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| "Oh!..." as the poet so sweetly has it
"...To be in England
"Now that April's there,
"But whoever goes to England,
"in March or Februar-,
"-Y probably needs his head looked at,
"And a large fur coat..."
or something equally and really heartfelt like that. And since I am now back from what turned out to be the land of the ice and snow and I'm busily un-lagging my jet and un-freezing my..., well..., just about everything, I can start to forget its hellweathers.
| | Read More... | | Always supposing that the world hasn't ended, or found itself embroiled in WWIII, and that neither of us is dead, or in gaol, or terminally ill (with, one hopes, a non-distressing and disgust-free disease), then the chances are quite good that when (and indeed if) you hear this I will be luxuriating in that fount of all things...
that home of the ... and the... um... that... ... .
Well maybe that explains everything, and gives you the whole and complete gist of this essay in one praecisio-enriched lacuna (Ok, in several bunched lacunæ)! You see I'll be at home in England when you hear this, and so this seems a good time to revisit the universally distressing subject of Ethnodeficiency--well at least it's distressing to the English, which ought to amount to the same thing.
| | Read More... | | If you remember, a couple of weeks ago I seared the airwaves with a harrowing tale of my heartbreaking love life: or rather, and more accurately, I seared the airwaves with the harrowing tale of my absolute failure to actually manage to get a love life---or, as some have maintained, to manage to get a life of any sort at all!
And now, in a nice little exercise in exacerbation, we are facing that Day when anciently the birds were fabled to select their mates; and latterly the day when humans chose and honoured theirs; and modernly the one when every first-through-third grader in the whole United States vows his or her passionate undying love for every other first-through-third grader in the class irrespective of looks, popularity, ethnicity, or indeed sex or sexual orientation: or rather, and more accurately, vows their school board's passionate undying love for every grade of political correctness!
| | Read More... | | Isn't it exciting! This year we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar (or as we more pretentious folk like to call it--Trafalgar) when the noble English, under the even more noble (well you've just got to ignore that Lady Hamilton ...thing, haven't you?---and what happeved to her and to poor little Horatia afterwards certainly wasn't his fault, so we'll still say...), noble Admiral Lord Nelson, beat those evil, stinky Froggie chappies, who were then (under the auspices of that notorious, Corsicoid, pseudoFroggie, one-armed bandit Napoleon) so intent on world domination, and you'd better forget all that Lafayette crap, because if we hadn't stopped them you can be sure that you Mercans would have been next: and then you'd be sorry---why, you'd have been forced to speak French and eat garlic in bed and even (Oh! Horror!) been forced to eat French fries with every single meal!
| | Read More... | | In my more miserable, cynical, jaundiced and, quite frankly, anti-American, or perhaps just un-American moments (Oh! Yeah. Like you never have them--I'm sure everybody has anti-American, or perhaps just un-American feelings, even the most Love-it-or-Leave-it-y of the Daughters of the National American John Birch Rifle Society) anyway, anyway in that state I regale, or comfort, or maybe just distract myself with the thought that leaf-blowing is the defining American activity: it involves almost no physical effort, it is noisy, inefficient, and tends to end up dumping rubbish in someone else's back yard.
| | Read More... | | I vaguely remember seeing an old manuscript in (I think) Balliol's library (or, wait a minute... was it in the Bodlian? ...it's just too long ago to remember exactly---in fact it seems so long ago that I fancy that when I saw it its ink was probably only just about dry, though they wisely didn't offer me the opportunity to test my radical hypothesis): anyway, ...anyway wherever the bloody thing was it contained that famous macaronic poem from the later fifteenth century, you know the one, the one with the refrain "Of alle creatures women be best / Cuius contrarium verbum est"! And, you know after the last couple of weeks wildness I've started to think that those old misogynistical monkish buggers who presumably wrote the thing might just have had a point in there---I mean one beyond the fact that they got their jollies from refusing to teach to girls.
| | Read More... | | It is a well-known scientific fact that men, and I don't mean Detrisexuals or Metrosexuals, or whatever they are nowadays, I just mean boring, regular, guy-type men, are physically and mentally, probably even genetically, incapable of shopping for clothes in any meaningful way---left to our own devices we would almost certainly still be wearing those same smelly old skins we got off that wild boar back in the early spring of the year 7,317 B.C.
| | Read More... | | English writers seem to have a predilection for living abroad and lamenting the fact. For example think of Robert Browning writing ‘Home Thoughts from abroad’ while living in Italy,
O, to be in England now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!
though, of course, we know full well why they are abroad: I mean, England’s not the best place for writers with names like Browning - it’s too full of conversations like:
“I say do you like Browning?”
“I don’t know I’ve never browned, we just don’t have the weather for it”.
Same thing with Kipling who’s another Englishman most renowned for ex-patriot writing.
“I say do you like Kipling?”
“I don’t know I’ve never kippled”.
| | Read More... | | Oh! Forget your oft-made claims about things that are "Only in the US of A" because what follows should easily trump you while coming under the heading of "Only In the UK of GB & NI" or if you're feeling lazy "Only in Britain". And, furthermore, during the following discourse I'd like you to bear in mind that even today the most important things in society over there have Royal associations---it's always "The Royal Navy", "The Royal Air Force", "The Royal Academy"---so consider this: we have a "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" (we also have a "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Birds" for that matter). Guess what we do for our children? Unlike British beasts of the land (and birds of the air for that matter), all that British children get is a mere "National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" and you can almost feel the unwritten rider "As Long As it Don't Hurt Poor Little Animals (Or Birds For that Matter)".
| | Read More... | | Thanksgiving having passed such a short time ago this seems an appropriate moment to look at the other side of the coin: at You'rewelcomegiving.
You'rewelcomegiving is that nonchalant, not-quite-smug, and rather indeterminately located holiday wherein we take the time to celebrate one of the only three things that America has ever given to the culture of the world that are totally unalloyed, pure improvements (the other two being of course the Marshall Plan and Carrot Cake). Everything else---McDonalds, Hollywood, saying (but obviously not meaning) "Have a nice day", have all been unmitigated disasters and have been to the culture of the world the equivalent of bovine spongeform encephalopathy or at least of a nasty bout of foot fungus. | | Read More... |
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