I hope that Europeans realise that it really only is absence that makes their hearts grow so strangely fond of Noam Chomsky, and that they don’t take up Eric Bakovic’s suggestion and deprive the Empire of a major source of export revenues. I first bumped into Chomsky when an ambitious professor thought it would be [...]

Someone claiming to be in LeMeaux has mailed to refute M’s suggestion that our mayor, Joan Clos, had made some kind of artificial addition to his beloved Hampton Wick. So what the hell’s wrong with him then?

Quake and quiver, countryfolk, for Sicilian gentlemen will shortly be beating Berkshire’s bushy byways for the Great British Truffle Harvest of 2004; the principal threats to Catalonia’s black diamonds, on the other hand, are Alzheimer’s–forests seem very big when you’re with an 85-year old who can’t remember where the buggers are–and wild boar.
Wild boar are [...]

André Hazes, the notable (but not notably abstemious–he famously lit up in the no-smoking cinema in which his life-film was being premiered) Dutch singer, died yesterday morning. RIP, one would think, but the Dutch music industry is smart–and tacky–enough not to miss a fiscal-friendly moment like this: Enschede a/ Zee has scanned the condolence ad [...]