This nails the ghastly lack of transcendence in modern churches. Advanced minds will throw up their hands in exasperation at my mental limitations and the temerity of my expression. They will put me in the “monstrous carbuncle” reactionary box. Where I’m happy to be. With Chartres and Notre Dame.

One assumes the flat-earth people in Brazil and elsewhere will not be rushing out to buy eclipse glasses. The darkening of the sun must be down to some naughty political plot. Or the wrath of Huitzilopochtli vel sim.

Partly such errors are just annoying. But there’s also the mischief that those who know no better might see this and think it correct. Yes, I know. Don’t tell me. Spelling is a distraction and doesn’t matter. Moreover, it’s all a dastardly plot to cement the power of elites.

I saw this on a bus. I thought of PIE *sneigwh- which gives Gk. νίφα, Lat. nix, Russ. Снег, Eng. snow. Is there perhaps a language where “snog” means snow? So your frozen yoghurt is snow. I could look this up online but would be far more tickled if someone just knows.

In English, what do we call this thing with the ketchup and vinegar and what not inside? I really don’t know.

My Facebook algorithm wants me to buy what it calls Christian Prayer Mats. These, I confess, are new to me. But then it takes me all my effort to get onto my knees and off again with the assistance of a strategically-placed kneeler. I wouldn’t pin my hopes on shagpile.

RIP Sir Anthony Kenny

To someone like me, whose first language is English, the resonances of this word are unfortunate.

Seen today in London. Is there some functional difference between a tap and a faucet?

From an auction catalogue. The mythical Roman empress Diana. So mythical, I’ve never heard of her. It doesn’t immediately look like the goddess Diana. But I’m not aware of any imperial consort of that name in West or East from the beginning to the fall of Constantinople.

TFW your tea comes in pot with a cup and you don’t have to have a stand off with someone who wants to give you a mug with a teabag floating in it and probably also a spoon to put your eye out. I shouldn’t call this a teacup but it’s still on the right side of the line.

It’s very fitting that this Barchesteresque scene should be sitting atop a pillar box given that Anthony Trollope was instrumental in the introduction of the pillar box in these parts.

The second paragraph describes my own upbringing and that of others I knew as a child. Familiarity was baked in by dint of repetition. Markedly less so now. Even in the 90s, I had students who would shrug at biblical references, “We’re not religious.” Congratulations. But …

If your shoes are not FUBAR You can take them to the shoe bar.

“Cursive Arabic script never worked happily as movable type and typeset Arabic was long viewed in its homeland rather as tinned spaghetti is in Italy.” Tim Mackintosh-Smith

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t get away before. I was lunching with my p-ppreposterous tutor. He thought it was very odd my leaving when I did. I told him I had to change for F-f-footer.’

You never know these days what’s from the real world and what’s AI. But I like this whatever its source. As I stepped this morning from a roasting street into a cool church for midday Mass, I thought of Luke 16:24.

At first take, I read this with a short [ɪ], as though it were Das Kinderkochbuch. 😬 But I reminded myself that, whilst Jonathan Swift satirically floated the idea of eating die Kinder, it never really caught on and certainly not to the extent of being advertised. 😮‍💨

How many times have I dried my hands courtesy of Dyson and wondered what, if anything, is being spelled out by this sequence. It looks a bit like “sloth”. Or maybe that’s just my inner Bradypus talking. 🤷

In Martin Luther’s Ein feste Burg, we find the line “ein Wörtlein kann ihn fällen” or, in the common English version, “one little word can fell him.” What is the little word? I have generally assumed it was “love”. But I assume Luther had a word in mind. Is it known?

As I made my way through a suddenly zombified Bloomsbury this evening, with everyone in thrall to their haunted goldfish tank, I was put in mind of this book which I read when I was a graduate student. Time for a revised edition - with a section on football.

Presumably the morals of the rich were taken to be beyond question.

My new book on Homer’s Odyssey Book XI is well on its way through Oxford University Press and is due out in November. That’s in plenty of time for Christmas. Only 600 pages once the indices are in. And a snip at £25 in paperback. Tell all your friends! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Recent discussions of neologisms have noted how people are adding “-maxxing” as an affix to practically anything. In the same spirit, and in light of the heroic efforts of our friends the seagulls, I offer you a fresh coinage: shitmaxxing (Sounds better than guanomaxxing, no?)

Sean Connery was the same age I am now (i.e. just a smidgin south of sixty) when he appeared as Henry Jones Sr. in The Last Crusade. I’ve always read him in that role as much older. Maybe it’s because he was my parents’ generation and I just can’t believe that was 37 years ago.

John’s Gospel is a “pool in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim.” - Leon Morris

I’m enjoying Falling on Channel 4. But I cringed when Fr David explained to a young woman that “viaticum” comes from “viā tecum” - “on the road with you.” The correct etymology is below. Still, if I had a quid for every time the clergy lectured the laity from a place of linguistic naivety …