One of the more arcane pieces of knowledge I picked up as a youth was the certainty that you could use a pair of stockings to fix the fan-belt on your roadster’s engine.

“Take off your stockings,” I’d murmur to the woman in the bucket seat next to mine at the first sign of trouble.

She’d oblige,...

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Longtime readers will know that I am a patient gardener. Not for me the flashy allure of a large pot of instant floral gratification. I like to sow seeds, wait for them to emerge, pot them on, savour the passing time and the growth of the plant towards its final destiny. But even I suffer from bo...

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There is real joy in seeing a biter bit.

And so it is with Robert Eric Frykenberg, who recently reviewed "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" by Lizzie Collingham for Christianity Today. Frykenburg is professor emeritus of history and South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madis...

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A conversation posted to flickr by Dunstan Orchard and the ensuing comment-fest, prompted me to recall the following:

So, a famous British Antarctic explorer is due to give a public lecture at Leeds Town Hall. The Mayor of Leeds gets up on the podium and says:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my...

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It probably means something that the print can only be made while listening to a recording of a Herbie Hancock jazz standard being played on dobro. I just wish I knew what that meaning is.

One of the pleasures abandoned in moving into a digital darkroom.

This much is clear. Microsoft hel...

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