Brenda strikes back

“Don’t waste your time on obscure contemporary composers, John,” she said.

On tour in South Africa in 1968.

Christmas carousels

Impossible automata for my street organ this holiday season. Featuring Georg Büchner, Ignaz Bruder, German Christmas pyramids, dancing Hasidim, Lieutenant Kijé as you’ve probably never seen it, Le Tigre, and a crustacean.

Types of (German) Christmas pyramid.

My top 10 boxing songs

All-star bill featuring Dan Mendoza aka the fighting Jew, manly Victorians, Joe Louis and the Dixieaires at the Battle of Jericho, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Rocky Graziano aka the Maharishi Yoghurt, Bob Dylan and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, Muhammad Ali and over-reliance on computer technology, Rich Hall and the George Foreman Grill, Wesley Willis and Batman, and Ivor Cutler.

Richard Humphries' second blocks a crucial blow from Daniel Mendoza in the 1788 bout.

East London justification of the greengrocer’s apostrophe

Walking home through Hackney this evening, I met a charity shop with a sign that read, “Donation’s welcome.” “Are you sure about that?” I asked the proprietor. “Donation is welcome,” he explained. So “Apple’s £2 / kilo” means “Apple is two pounds a kilo,” there’s obviously a dialect singular / plural thing going on, and…