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Experiencing Rose and a stimulating conversation

In the week I went to a wine tasting on non Provençal roses. Roses account for 11% of all wine sold in the UK. It’s an interesting case study on how wine tastes change. In the 70s and 80s it was unfashionable with consumers and unrated by the wine critics. Its introduction to the UK came [...]

July 21, 2018 // 0 Comments

Walking on the spot

Most people will have heard Walking In Memphis, the 1991 multi-Grammy award song by American Marc Cohn, a 59 year old, twice divorced, singer-songwriter. I know I have, but until this week – my problem rather than anyone else’s, I admit – neither his name nor his connection to said ditty had [...]

July 20, 2018 // 0 Comments

On the attack!

Recently I have adopted a more aggressive approach to inadequate service. In the past I railed to my friends about poor quality service but now I take a tougher approach with the company itself. It started with my Glyndebourne picnic company. The cold tomato soups were all omitted. My guest was so [...]

July 19, 2018 // 0 Comments

(Don’t) play it again, Sam …

Whenever a group of Rust columnists convenes, as you’d expect, we chat mostly about everything and nothing but there always come a point in proceedings – sometimes brief – where the watchwords behind the very purpose of this organ and what we’re trying to do get mentioned if not [...]

July 19, 2018 // 0 Comments

It’s all up in the air and staying there

My sermon today covers ground far beyond that of my normal brief and in one sense that probably justifies today’s topic (and with bells on) anyway. At some point last year in one of my Rust columns I announced that, post the election and inauguration of US President Donald Trump, I was [...]

July 17, 2018 // 0 Comments

What you do and don’t know

Last week I had lunch with some old pals I’ve known for fifty years and more. Such gatherings are now bitter-sweet affairs in the sense that – after decades of what some might accurately describe as each of us generally ‘ageing’ at different/varying speeds in terms of body shape, hair [...]

July 15, 2018 // 0 Comments

Stop the world, I want to get off (again)

This PC madness continues! The media is currently awash with reports of the decision of Scarlett Johansson to withdraw from a new movie called Rub and Tug in which she had been cast as a transgender character, this after protests from right-on campaigners that it should only be played by someone [...]

July 14, 2018 // 0 Comments

Phew – what inequality!

It is the case that I rarely venture onto the sports pages of the Rust. The subject is neither my specialty nor within my remit – one might even be justified in stating that it ranks above my pay grade, were it but for the fact that I don’t get paid – but today I feel moved to do so after [...]

July 14, 2018 // 0 Comments

A soul legend rocks the Union Chapel

The Grade 1-listed Union Chapel in Islington/Highbury, built in the late 19th Century in Gothic-revival style, is both a working Congregationalist church and a charity drop-in centre but perhaps best well-known to irreligious bums like me as a corking-good live music venue. Somehow its combination [...]

July 11, 2018 // 0 Comments

To 1944 and back

This may sound a degree absurd from someone in their sixties with a general interest in military history but last week I made my first-ever research trip to Normandy as a member of a small touring group spending five days ‘doing’ the D-Day Landings and elements of the 1944 Allied campaign to [...]

July 8, 2018 // 0 Comments

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