the view from fanling

A friend showed me something interesting—and unexpected—a few weeks ago: a brick wall! He’s taken leave of his senses, you might conclude at...

It is often said that there are no right angles in nature, but this is not strictly true. Of course, there are no animals or plants with squ...

I recorded the results of my explorations of the Ashton Canal in Some Consolation: Part 2 , but I deliberately avoided including the graffit...

When I posted Turf Wars in 2011, I did so in the expectation that the story still had some distance to run. At the time, the only hints tha...

These fragments I have shored against my ruins. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land . There are scores of squatter huts in my neighbourhood, mos...

One of the more pleasant aspects of the recent hot weather has been the opportunity, rarely granted to the long-suffering residents of the...

In 1900, the material condition of the human race was unquestionably better than it had been a century earlier. In a country like England tw...

The Midland Railway was in 1923 the only railway company running into London that didn’t have its head office in the capital, and before Bri...

I have suggested in previous posts ( Who’s Fooling Who? and Knowledge or Certainty ) that a degree of mysticism attaches to modern theories...

Have you ever wondered why alien visitors to this planet never contact anyone even remotely sensible? And have you noticed that this same ra...