A S H Smyth › Turned out nice again

Skip to content

Tag Archives: children

Turned out nice again

Friday, January 28, 2022

With the 40th anniversary of the Falklands conflict imminent, two Brits – one Stanley-based and one in Buenos Aires – discuss that ‘hottest’ of all conversational potatoes… the weather. — For The Emigre

Filed in Journalism, podcast | Also tagged Argentina, bars, Buenos Aires, Covid-19, Dominic Hilton, Falkland Islands Radio Service, farming, free speech, hair, holidays, landmines, maps, marriage, quarantine, sheep, shipping, Stanley, The Emigre, the Falklands, trees, vaccination, Virginia, walking, war, weather | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, August 17, 2020

. An architect named Firth was found at a Weymouth inquest to have shot himself in the side with a toy cannon while temporarily insane. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, December 22 1908 . The SAS have killed some people in Afghanistan. The Veneziana pizza was invented in the 1970s by Pizza Express. In […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Afghanistan, anatomy, architecture, artillery, bookshops, China, Christmas, cocks, Colombo, fathers, food, greed, humanity, laziness, madness, magic, Nelson Evening Mail, news, Pizza Express, reindeer, religion, robots, Russian, SAS, satire, Sir Isaac Newton, Sydney, the Dutch, trees, Venice, Weymouth, wolves | Comments (0)

State of the nation

Thursday, July 9, 2020

Review of Andrew Fidel Fernando’s debut book Upon a Sleepless Isle, which has just won Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize (2019) for English-language literature. — For The Critic

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Andrew Fidel Fernando, Anuradhapura, beards, beer, Booker Prize, Colombo, colonialism, cricket, elephants, English, ESPNCricinfo, Gratiaen Prize, humour, Jaffna, John Still, Kandy, LTTE, Michael Ondaatje, Minneriya, New Zealand, Nuwara Eliya, Picador India, Polonnaruwa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, tea, the British, The Critic, the Victorians, tourism, travel, tuktuks, Uva Rebellion, writers | Comments (0)

May Day, May Day…

Monday, May 4, 2020

A lockdown letter from Colombo. — For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Amazon, Argentina, army, beer, China, Colombo, coronavirus, cricket, Dominic Hilton, drink, Facebook, food, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, health, letters, lockdown, May Day, Mel Gibson, money, Osama bin Laden, painting, peacocks, quizzes, Sanskrit, shopping, Singapore, Sinhala, socialism, Sri Lanka, swimming, the British, The Critic, UberEats, work | Comments (0)

The Pelican

Saturday, April 25, 2020

Or; Some Further Notes Towards the Bestiary To the researches of the antiquary and scholar Jorge Luis ‘Vintage’ Borges, a few points offer further context on that most peripatetic of birds in this, our present century. . Learned reports come from South Asia, where the spotted-bill Filipino pelican (phillipensis) is found, with no small irony, only in Cambodia, the Indian peninsular, and in Sri Lanka (or the contemporary […]

Filed in Fictions | Also tagged America, animals, army, babies, basketball, Borges, British Library, Cambodia, Captain Scott, Colombo, Corpus Christi College, daughters, death, Egypt, employment, fables, food, Gartagena, General John Guise, Hebrew, hieroglyphs, Horapollo, India, Jesuits, John Grisham, Joseph Hall, King Lear, murder, oil, pelican, Post-modern Bestiary, psychology, Roald Dahl, Spain, Sri Lanka, St James's Palace, St James's Park, St Jerome, stupidity, the Bible, The Spectator, Thomas Aquinas, US Supreme Court | Comments (0)

‘It is the living we should fear’

Sunday, March 29, 2020

DISCLAIMER: Ten years ago, I reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, for this newspaper. It was brilliant, I said, and everyone should buy it. I noted, though, for form’s sake, that I’d done some light proofreading of the manuscript, and hoped that this would not be taken either as cause or symptom of inoperable bias. […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged BBC, Colombo, Commonwealth Book Prize, cousins, cricket, death, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, Elvis Presley, Gratiaen Award, Herodotus, independence, Marlon James, Marxism, Michael Ondaatje, Nietzsche, novels, Oscar Wilde, pangolins, Penguin India, photography, Richard de Zoysa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Singlish, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), The Mahavamsa, The Matrix, war, Wisden | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, December 2, 2019

. There are more kilts in London than in Scotland. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, May 9 1907 . At 45% of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic in America. Hermal eggings are so leek. No sensitive person would choose to be the historian of the Irish asylums in the first part of the […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged America, clothing, drink, ducks, English, food, goldfish, health, Hegel, history, holidays, humour, London, madness, Nelson Evening Mail, new, politics, religion, Rioja, Robert Southey, Russia, satire, Scotland, Smak, Spinoza, the Irish, WG Grace | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, November 4, 2019

. The Government of India collects about £7,000,000 from the sale of opium. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, July 19 1906 . Jacob Zuma is the only black South African president never to lift the rugby world cup. At Morrisons, your opinion gets rewarded with a £500 voucher. Vegetarianism, which is based on false hypotheses and ideas, […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged basketball, blindness, Canada, CENS, construction, cookies, death, democracy, drugs, Dublin Zoo, fathers, fruit, government, India, Jacob Zuma, lions, Mahler, money, Morrisons, Necessity, Nelson Evening Mail, news, philosophy, property, Rugby World Cup 2019, satire, sex, South Africa, the Soviet Union, trees, vegetarianism, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | Comments (0)

Applause for thought?

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Midori Goto’s violin recital in Colombo, reviewed. (Along with half the audience.) — For the Sunday Times (SL)

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged audiences, Brahms, cell-phones, Chamber Music Society of Colombo, Colombo, Debussy, education, etiquette, Fauré, Ieva Jokubaviciute, Lakshman Joseph de Saram, Lionel Wendt, Midori Goto, music, piano, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), violin | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, September 23, 2019

. John Stow, author of the Survey of London, was rewarded by James I with a licence to beg. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, August 17 1906 . In Germany, young ladies have no sex. ‘Silver Billy’ Beldham was blond, and is said to have fathered 39 children. Thom Yorke’s left eye is made […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Alexander von Humboldt, anatomy, Britain, Chinese, cricket, Edward Said, eels, fairies, Germany, James I, John Stow, law, London, money, Nelson Evening Mail, Nevada, Poetry, satire, sex, ships, sport, stupidity, the internet, the Middle East, Thom Yorke, vegetables, William Beldham, women, words, writers, Xerxes | Comments (0)