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Feuilles volantes

Ria — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:45:45 +0000

While waiting in the basement for the washing machine to finish, I picked up a book from the open boxes stacked under the stairs, the remainder of our unpacking from … almost two years ago *gulp*. The book was a well foxed paperback of Victor Hugo’s Choses vues, a sort of memoir of major and

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Future anterior

Ria — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:38:42 +0000

Here’s another neologism for you — premem — similar to my previous new word, and also triggered by one of my children. It means “pre-memory”, and while sounding like something out of a Philip K. Dick story, my meaning refers to a more intimate epiphany, one of those “golden moments” when you can already visualize,

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Postlapsarian PNP: After the fall from grace

Ria — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:04:25 +0000

The recent general election in Jamaica was a close run between the People’s National Party, in power for 18 years, and the Jamaica Labour Party. While at least one of the sixty seats remains to be decided by the courts, the JLP still managed to squeeze past the incumbents with a four-seat majority.

Politically motivated

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Two cultures clash

Ria — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 06:05:54 +0000

Talk of banning the “dance of death” is still doing the rounds here in Kingston, or at least it was this morning at the hairdresser’s. The dance in question is of course the “Dutty Wine”. In a country where new dance moves pop up every week, the Dutty Wine has shown unusual endurance since its

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Writing wrongs

Ria — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:44:27 +0000

Taking a break from the political meltdown here in Jamaica, I got a tip-off from a fellow editor in Rome about a new term for spellcheck mis-corrections: The Cupertino Effect.

The origin of the term, coined at the Language Log, is from the the common mistyping of “cooperation” as “cooperatino”. Bizarrely, certain spellcheckers offer “Cupertino”

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Amor vincit omnia fe true

Ria — Fri, 12 May 2006 15:10:39 +0000

We have 125 channels on TV.

I watch very little and very irregularly: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and, the main advantage of so many channels, reruns of great US comedies such as Seinfeld, Frasier and vintage Cheers. Yet it’s one of the mysteries of the universe that I seem condemned to see the

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Blood and cement

Ria — Wed, 03 May 2006 18:48:00 +0000

As if the recent shortage of cement in Jamaica was not bad enough for the construction industry, I read in today’s Gleaner that companies will now have to factor the cost of blood offerings into their budget plans:

CONSTRUCTION WORK came to a halt at the PiÃ±ero Group hotel site in Pear Tree Bottom, near

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Late night reading

Ria — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:55:00 +0000

Late at night, when everybody else is asleep, I reach under the bed and get out my favourite porn reading: The Rough Guide to Jamaica. Check out this extract: A mile or so past Chukka Cove, a tiny paved road cuts inland towards Cranbrook Flower Forest, an exquisitely landscaped, 130-acre nature park with several

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Where there’s muck

Ria — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:43:00 +0000

Out cycling this morning, I passed a field being ripped up. Walking a few metres behind the earthmover (It’s Scoop, mama!) was a man with a metal detector and a spade.

“Dude! WTF!!” I shouted, but he was too busy to look up.

I can’t imagine what he hoped to

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SPQR

Ria — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 04:13:00 +0000

I always reckoned that if you were going to be a bum, there are worse places to choose than Rome.

I took this photo in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. The coat of arms of the city of Rome forms part of the fountain sculpture. The letters SPQR stand for Senatus Populusque Romanus

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