The value of nothing

We have a new neighbour: the White Cube gallery on Bermondsey Street. It's a sort of out of town superstore version of the other White Cubes dotted around London. Except that it's not out of town; it's in Zone 1, SE1, Bermondsey Street, aka the "new Notting Hill". Etc.

Big Brother v. little sis

Two decades ago, as a rookie journalist working for a UK marketing magazine, I drew the short straw and found myself with the slightly indecent-sounding job title of "below-the-line editor". Above the line is where you wanted to be. It meant you were privvy to the glamorous, overpaid world of advertising. Below was all the detritus: low-status stuff like direct marketing ("Don't call it junk mail !"), sales promotion and PR.

Stranger Lands

Lech l'cha. Arise and go. Move yourself.

We first leave womb when we are exiled from the home, but just in time since we would have died in Eden. Seek pastures new. Over yonder, under horizon, left at rainbow. Earth flying at 66,000 miles an hour, there's no being, only becoming. I am what I will be.

Kosher snake oil

Once upon a time, many centuries ago, one Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Girondi left his home town of Girona and travelled to the big city of Barcelona, where he engaged in a now-famous public debate. A former fellow Jew who'd converted to Christianity and become the King's right-hand spiritual advisor wanted to "prove" that Judaism was the theologically inferior religion.

Laughter and forgetting

I know I must be a parent because there's a nagging guilt that followed my "what a squeam" post and has made me worry I was too negative. So let me salve my conscience by hereby stating: I may have laughed more in recent times than ever before in my 44 years. Thanks to the sproglet.

Poverty of imagination

Another in the endless parade of Brazilian tackiness. The "rich" lifestyle in Brazil leaves me cold - or cringing.