Diversions Manifold

  I finally - probably not for the last time - started reading Thinking the Twentieth Century by Tony Judt with Timothy Snyder . That may sound suspicious: admitting two authors is generally a bad sign for a book, but here it was a necessary conceit. Tony Judt was an eminent moral historian who was struck down with ALS (the illness made famous / trivialised by 2014’s ice bucket challenge fad): Snyder is an American historian of Eastern Europe who faded in and out of Judt’s comet trail over the years and who decided that Judt’s own history, views and development over the decades needed to be captured before the inevitable, swift, end.   So this is a “spoken book”, a conversation between two colleagues speaking and discussing at eye level, rather than an interview between a professional journalist and a professional of something else entirely. Judt and Snyder by necessity follow in the Eastern European tradition of such transcribed conversations. I’m looking forward to discoveri

This morning, another relaxed, family- and work-free morning, I pottered about getting up, making breakfast and checking the weather. Finally, the rain was due - but only later in the afternoon. So, I packed my bag, plopped in my contact lenses, had a cup of tea, read more of “Teach us to sit still” by Tim Parks - an amazing account of his battle to find his balance, in order to alleviate his pain - and then finally hopped on my bike to the Tiergarten swimming pool. It was the perfect time to go. I was ready to swim at 11:45 and there were three people in the play pool (the readout showed that was 22 °C - and it really took my breath away when I plunged in), though there was a flurry of wet-suited triathletes taking up a third of the olympic pool (which was a balmy 24 °C). The rest of the place was practically deserted, and I had a lane to myself. Without the stress of having to watch out for other swimmers, I realised what really stresses me about swimming - it’s bloody noisy! Whet

Staatsfeind Wikileaks - "Wikileaks - Enemy of the State" - published in January 2011 by two journalists (Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark from Der Spiegel ) who followed Julian Assange during the tumultuous year of Wikileaks "revelations" and exposures throughout 2010 is one of those perplexing "history of now" books Reading the book (a Christmas present from my brother in law) now, especially the introductory paragraphs, feels strangely hollow, as if there's a large, NSA and Edward Snowden-sized gap in the story being told. Conversely, today there seems to be a Wikileaks and Assange-sized gap in the news - though it's a gap nobody appears to miss very much. I'm only at the beginning of Staatsfeind Wikileaks and, despite a noticeable editorial miss (unless I've missed a large Australian city called "Syndey"), it's shaping up to be an interesting read. It has flowed fairly chronologically so far, describing an unusual,

Writing about smelling things makes me feel remarkably uneasy. It seems to be more acceptable somehow to write about music or noise, photography or fashion, even about its food and drink counterpart than it is about odour itself. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Developing the sense of smell is, after all, a skill, a talent, an art, just like learning to listen and to see. And, standing as I do at the very bottom of the olfactory learning curve, I’m very bad at it. Unless I had a cold and I couldn’t breathe or taste properly, I took my sense of smell totally for granted. I would pay great heed to it in potentially negative scenarios, like sniffing for food or clothes that were a bit off - until recently, when a book opened my nose to that most chemical of arts, perfume. That book was The Secret of Scent by Luca Turin. I unexpectedly found this alluring accord of olfactory geekery and scientific erudition on my bookshelf at home, where it had been left by my father who, as a c