a return

I’m not sure what steered me initially away, and brought me to what I hope to be a more permanent return to the site. Things change, I suppose.

I used to subscribe to the Times Literary Supplement; each new issue invariably arrived on a Tuesday, and it would be the focal point until, once religiously devoured, the following week’s arrival. Book reviews of scholarly, sometimes academic, tomes being the focus of the TLS, each issue practically re-invented itself anew; a well-chosen cover, unpredictable and bearing no relation to the content, made the TLS a true weekly.

One fixture was Hugo Williams fortnightly (?, I forget) “Freelance” column. I remember him asking in an ancient issue:

Is it being a past-oriented person that makes one a writer, or vice versa? I read recently that writers are rarely contented because they trespass on sacred ground.

Indeed.

This spring-cleaning of this domain – notwithstanding a much needed re-design – began with a simple culling of old links. The musical Memphis Cat is gone; downtheinkwell has stopped writing. totalitarianism today is birthing a child or three. democratic underground has gone all mainstream and relevant.

On a cheerful note, s p u r i o u s is back, while I’m glad pas au-delà is still around.

The biggest shock, however, is that “Politics” is no longer a category on these pages. How the times have changed me.