Critical reviews can really help boost your audience. Having read a ratter of a review that told me in no uncertain words that Emily In Paris (Netflix) was not worth the number of pixels it contained, I gave it a go. Just the first episode, mind you. That’s what I did last weekend – started […]
Culture
Black Lives Matter In A Land Of Hope And Glory
You’re at it again, aren’t you? Playing mind games with traditions, tearing up musical scripts and peeling off black make-up on white people’s faces. I got used to seeing Black Peter roaming the streets of Dutch towns and cities, distributing marzipan tasting biscuits to smiling children. The children believed; the children loved. There was no […]
Why Miss Piggy Made Me Love Feminism
There are very few women who have marked my life, but I’m not ashamed to say that Miss Piggy is one of them. It’s the way she throws her blond locks over her shoulders that gets me. Together with her penciled-in eyelashes, Miss Piggy is the living proof that women don’t have to wear tons […]
Why A Writer Should Be Locked Up
As a writer, you’ve got no excuse not to write – unless you have four toddlers crawling around your living room, creating havoc. I suppose that I can be forgiven for not writing because it really is a hobby. I’m spending most of my time cancelling appointments and worrying about the rest of humanity. But […]
Claude Lévi-Strauss – Father Christmas Burned as a Heretic
On December 24th 1951, a group of Catholic clergymen hanged and set on fire a Father Christmas effigy in front of at least 250 children in Dijon, France. Following the incident, the late French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote an article entitled “Le Père Noël supplicié” (“The tortured Father Christmas”) in the literary journal “Les Temps […]
Sexism And Wine – When Colombelle Meets Adam
It could have been much worse for Colombelle, our sweet little white wine tasting of exotic fruit and wild flowers. Instead of meeting up with Adam, a respectable red, she could have suffered the displeasure of having to pass the best part of the evening with an Arrogant Frog. Discrimination starts in the vineyards, […]
What It Feels Like To Be Frenglish
An article I came across in the Observer presents a documentary made by French journalist and producer Benjamin Carle. In his documentary that is to be shown on French TV, he tries to put himself in the shoes of an Englishman to see what he likes about the English and whether he can see himself […]
Five Minutes In The US And My English Is In Big Trouble
I didn’t spend long in the US, just past customs and a few hours between terminals, but I can tell you straight away that if I came to live there permanently, my English would quickly be in big trouble. For starters, my cute semblance of a cockneyish intonation due to my being born on the […]
Why Can’t I Be A Famous Moronic YouTuber?
I used not to mind YouTubers. Now I do. I suppose that I’m just jealous of a YouTuber who has 6 times more followers than inhabitants in the Netherlands. The bottom line is that I’m probably jealous of every single YouTuber. How I would love to have 98,457,085 subscribers to my blog. I’ve given up […]
Why Ann Widdecombe Got Her French “Leave” Terribly Wrong
A trilogy of posts on Ann Widdecombe! I cannot believe that I’m wasting my time on an old lady who is well past her “sell-by” date. I promise that you will not see another post on her from this particular IP address. Promise that, I do. But it sprang to my attention that no one […]