A S H Smyth › Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy Bluffer’s Guide

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Tag Archives: girlfriends

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy Bluffer’s Guide

Monday, June 4, 2018

Last weekend I played host to a particularly friendly cricket match – by which I mean that both teams had no clue what they were doing. The opposition, Rain Men, were captained by my friend and usual team-mate Simon, whose excuse was that he’d only played the game 263 times previously. The other captain was, […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged beer, Bluffer's Guides, Boris Starling, Brexit, cats, conversation, cricket, cycling, Duckworth Lewis, Englishmen, etiquette, fishing, footnotes, Fuller Pilch, golf, Harry Eyres, Haynes Publishing, humour, James Trollope, Jonathan Goodall, Keith Hann, leadership, management, Marcus Berkmann, Mike Brearley, Nick Yapp, opera, Rain Men, Samuel Johnson, Serbo-Croat, social media, South Africans, Susie Boniface, Test Match Special, The Oldie, Town Malling, William Hanson, wine, wisdom | Comments (0)

The Kings and I

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

A festive gripe about Cornelius’s lovely ‘Three Kings‘ – and the solo I have never got to sing in it. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Alexandra Coghlan, All Saints Maidstone, baritones, barristers, Bayreuth, BBC Books, carols, cellos, Christmas, Christmas Badger Singers, English, Franz Liszt, Gerald Finley, German, Germans, Hampton Court, HN Bate, Ivor Atkins, King's College London, Knightsbridge, men, music, Oxford University, Peter Cornelius, Radio 3, silk, singing, Smarden, Southwark Cathedral, Sri Lanka, The Judd School, The Oldie, translation, University of St Andrews, YouTube | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, November 27, 2017

. In the United Kingdom 200 out of every million persons are employed as writers or editors. — The Nelson Evening Mail, April 2 1907 . No-one has been found in a major search along the Torridge. ‘Pog mahone’ means ‘kiss my arse’, in Gaelic. Some people do not like to read instructions. In South Africa […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, Afrikaners, anatomy, death, demons, editors, employment, food, Gaelic, Hastings Banda, insects, Kilburn, kissing, lampposts, medicine, men, Nelson Evening Mail, painting, Peleliu, politics, Reading, rivers, Royal Navy, slavery, South Africa, suicide, the Bible, the Nile, the Pacific Ocean, the Torridge, USMC, Vincent Van Gogh, war, writing, WW2, youth | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, February 13, 2017

. The honorary freedom of the borough of Rye in Sussex confers upon the freemen the privilege of kissing the mayoress. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 21 1907 . When you register your child at birth, it immediately becomes the legal property of the state. In WW2 German physicists were able to discern the […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Anthony McGowan, Bowling Green, Brian Moore, butterflies, campanology, children, death, drink, English, Germans, golf, Inverness, kangaroos, manicures, musicals, Nelson Evening Mail, OED, officialdom, physics, radio, Samuel Beckett, sex, Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, snakes, Sussex, Thailand, the Dutch, work, WW2 | Comments (0)

The Top Fifteen Or So Wittiest Oscar Wilde Quotes – according to his Twitter output (last 24hrs)

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

1) ‘Think tattoos have to be bold and dark? Think again! Check out these stunning white ink tats!’ 2) ‘You can’t get your childhood back but you can recreate it! Check out these awesome recreation photos.’ 3) ‘Wanna see a real-life Barbie doll? This is not Photoshopped! You’ve gotta see this to believe it’ 4) […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged Barbie, foxes, humour, kissing, marriage, men, Miley Cyrus, Morrissey, New York Jets, Oscar Wilde, photography, Photoshop, piercings, pregnancy, tattoos, Taylor Swift, technology, the internet, The Pikey Laureate, women | Comments (0)

That situation

Friday, November 8, 2013

where you’re chatting up some girl ever so casually in a pub or a library or wherever, really, for a good half-hour or more only subsequently to realise you have one of your girlfriend’s hairs – a foot long, reddish, with noticeable purple highlights – stuck somehow to the front right shoulder of your sweater.

Filed in Poetry | Also tagged conversation, failure, hair, knitwear, libraries, men, pubs, women | Comments (0)

Nightmare

Friday, June 8, 2012

Best mate, in a bar, arm around his ex-girlfriend. I walk out. …………..Again.

Filed in Poetry | Also tagged dreams, haiku | Comments (1)

A poet’s room (after Oppen)

Friday, March 16, 2012

A poet’s room, these days, is probably his girlfriend’s, or an upstairs corner of his mother’s house – unless, with luck, he’s made it big, or, being smart, just married into money.

Filed in Poetry | Also tagged money, mothers, Poetry, writing | Comments (0)

Why Peter Ackroyd publishes more than me

Friday, March 16, 2012

Her argument Peter Ackroyd is a genius. Peter Ackroyd is a workaholic. Peter Ackroyd is a Brilliant Man. My argument Peter Ackroyd doesn’t have a girlfriend.

Filed in Fictions | Also tagged micro-fiction, Peter Ackroyd, writing | Comments (0)