Opinion | Off the Cuff
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Monday Jan 28
Talking to yourself, seeking solutions
Gesticulations that interested me greatly — rather increased my curiosity
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Sunday Jan 27
One emotion you don’t have to be ashamed of
I am now glad that my friend called me to find out about love
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Saturday Jan 26
When young women find their ‘creaky’ voice
‘The story of language is one of the dominant political group trying to fix the linguistic code in place’
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Friday Jan 25
A library of childhood experiences with books
Not being allowed to read actually encouraged us to do just that
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Friday Jan 25
And the Oscar for best career goes to ...
Predicting the next fashionable profession
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Wednesday Jan 23
Tired of thinking? Come to a conclusion
Life in a classroom of the Sixties
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Wednesday Jan 23
It’s about the journey, not the arrival
‘No matter where you go, there you are’
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Monday Jan 21
Raising the curiosity quotient, one piece at a time
The knowledge that no extra trees were cut down to hold your clothes make the acquisition of vintage furniture quite the addiction
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Sunday Jan 20
A Haddock Monte Carlo is wholesome and normal
There is, its fans claim, something pure about ‘dirty’ food
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Saturday Jan 19
A fascination with vanishing languages
Part of the fascination of reading about other languages is the windows they provide on their speakers
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Saturday Jan 19
Lasting presence in the home
Enduring memories of steel utensils
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Friday Jan 18
Jane Austen’s story endures, 200 years on
Pride and Prejudice captivates readers long before marketing mattered
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Wednesday Jan 16
Listening, a simple courtesy rarely extended
The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention
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Tuesday Jan 15
Up the Creek without a paddle
Up the Creek without a paddle
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Monday Jan 14
Dogs and underdogs united in warmth
In distress, man and animal seek warmer zone
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Sunday Jan 13
A teacup in a storm
Grief is so strange and alien that when someone who is always there is suddenly no longer around, receiving regular updates from that person, cards and emails, might well be the least of it
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Sunday Jan 13
Stative verbs — I’m lovin’ them
It’s fascinating to see how language gets at issues such as time, space, causation, agency and how it addresses the differences between outward and inward actions
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Friday Jan 11
‘Give the bankers a break!’
It was because of fuddy-duddies like us that we could never progress to a paperless society
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Thursday Jan 10
And when did you last learn a poem by heart?
Anthologies are deeply loved things
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Thursday Jan 10
Killing a giant, saving a home
‘Life begins when a person first realises how soon it will end’
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Wednesday Jan 9
Need to get my eyes and teeth covered
Whenever wife and entourage leave for Delhi, there is a long list of things that need to be done and sorted out — health-wise
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Tuesday Jan 8
Cracks in the plaster, doubts in mind
Some part of our anger with ‘Mr Ills’ is not so much about the work itself, but that he forces us to ask questions
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Monday Jan 7
At home, with my demons ...
Nursing these thoughts, I eventually fell asleep and dreamt of a small army of angelic carers
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Sunday Jan 6
Dynamic passives and the ‘exonerative past’
The passive voice that right-thinking people everywhere love to hate is the ‘I’m-apologising-but-not-really’ language
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Wednesday Jan 2
The desire to learn something useful
The desire to learn something useful
Opinion Editor's choice
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Spectre of a coup hangs on Lebanon
Beirut may well be forced to call on UN forces to protect its independence
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What’s Obama’s next move?
At present, Israel is in a state of flux
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G8 fails to find anything more than Geneva Two
Putin relishes his blocking vote on peace in Syria
