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the shopping assistant
I never appreciated what an outstanding cook my mother was until I had my first semi-serious girlfriend. I was 16 and had grown up eating mum’s traditional English fare, which was what my Dad preferred. Minced beef, mac and cheese, bubble and squeak, with an obligatory serving of liver every month or so. And of…
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first time in hollywood?
It wasn’t actually. I’d been there some years before, foolishly dispatched by a fledgling fashion-cum-lifestyle magazine based in Calgary to cover an art exhibition and book launch – orchestrated by an ex-Albertan – in Laguna Beach. (I reported that trip for the magazine in my best Hunter S. Thompson style, which I’d rather not re-live,…
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seeing is deceiving
A couple of years ago in the run up to the 2016 US election, I happened to stumble upon Newt Gingrich being interviewed on some US cable news program. He was stumping for Trump and the interviewer was quizzing him about one of the innumerable falsehoods the Candidate was peddling on the campaign trail. “It…
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austin space: a journey through sx
A few months ago I had my first experience of the phenomenon that is SXSW. Herewith some observations. A preface of sorts: South by Southwest (SXSW or, in the local vernacular, simply ‘south by’) crept onto my radar many years ago; its mix of popular culture, digital media and bleeding edge tech punched a lot…
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don’t ‘think different’. just think
My properly English mum would have disapproved of Steve Jobs’ famous slogan purely and simply for its grammatical incorrectness, for the same reason she tut-tutted whenever she saw a highway sign that said ‘GO SLOW’. The correct form was go slowly. Think differently. It requires the adverb, don’t you see? I do, Mum, I do;…
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serendipity in the virtual world
A few weeks ago I attended a conference in Vancouver on virtual reality. The show was mostly aimed at consumers but did include a ‘trade day’ at which industry folk would speak, share and connect. One of the keynotes was a trainer from NASA who explained how that agency invented and/or improvised many VR type…
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should i go or should i stay
A couple of years ago I was attending reception during a client’s sales convention and a few of their customers dropped by to socialise. One of them was a bit late, he explained, because he’d just come from escorting his pre-teen daughter to an Ariana Grande concert. Yeah, you probably already know where this is…
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conduct unbecoming
There is a lot of chatter in the domestic media right now about a certain cabinet minister who appears to have exaggerated his role in a certain military operation in Afghanistan. Yes, he was there and yes, he played an important role, but his characterisation of himself as ‘the architect’ – that is, the top…
