Blog carnivals are a good way of finding interesting items and blogs worth revisiting. The flip side of that is that they can be a good way of attracting new readers. Too often I forget about the first point while focussed on the first. So here’s a tribute to Berry-go-round, which I hope brought u...

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This post is number 47 in a series.

When the world was young, best beloved, and floppy disks were great big things the size of saucers, I needed to count the words in a book. So I thought, well, what separates one word from another. Why, a space! And sometimes a carriage return! And so I wrote a...

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This post is number 46 in a series.

Even in the contest between man and patio furniture, the issue is not certain.

The key to the communal terrace above having been obtained from the porter, the armchairs were squeezed through the doorway and lowered onto the terrace by means of mountaineering...

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This post is number 45 in a series.

Just under forty years ago, I knew where I wanted to be: Paris. Fresh from Grosvenor Square, it was possible to change anything and everything. Of course it all came to naught, but that first week in May as the news filtered across the Channel, Paris was where...

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This post is number 44 in a series.

And it is also a tribute -- an unforeseen one, as it happens -- to Blue Girl. She posted her 50th yesterday and, magnanimous to the last, her very next act was to encourage those of us she inspired to copy her. She also posted a scan before I did.