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had this image been from the 1950s: But to read today that McDonald’s is colonising children’s report cards (good grades = free happy meal) is nothing short of astounding. The contradictions are too flagrant: how, for one thing, in a world that is rapidly banning “junk food” from schools, is it allowed? Top left hand [...]

Two days ago I spent a morning here: It was hot, and I emerged with a decent beginner’s tan and a general feeling of summery well-being. The next day (yesterday) all hell broke loose in the skies and Cape Town experienced, some say, more rain than it has on any other day of this year. [...]

The word of the year (!), according to Oxford University Press, is “locavore”. So do like Jamie and make history by planting stuff in the garden.  With the right publisher, you too can pretend that no one else has done it before you.

So noted Walter Benjamin in 1935, much later to be published in his Arcades Project. The loveliness of the sentence is that it seems obvious, and easy, enough. When I was younger I used to think that I could dwell anywhere as long as I had my things; those were my traces. So, every five [...]

It is a sad thing to be reminded of how transparent everything has become, and how the plenty we have all become accustomed to (of food, of useless things that make us feel better, of marketing language that gives us a false and inflated sense of our importance in the world) really conceals a great [...]