A S H Smyth › Mortality 101 – or; Catullus at the graveside

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Author Archives: A S H Smyth

Mortality 101 – or; Catullus at the graveside

Saturday, November 11, 2017

The Oldie runs my poem for the Armistice commemorations. — For The Oldie

Filed in Poetry, Translation | Tagged Armistice Day, army, brothers, Catullus, death, Latin, The Oldie, Troy, war | Comments (0)

I ink, therefore I am

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

On the choice and acquisition of my one and only tattoo. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged Afghanistan, Anthony McGowan, army, Asterix, buffalos, Classics, Cleopatra, Egyptology, Elizabeth Taylor, gladiators, Greek, Latin, men, mothers, opera, Oxford, Rome, Russell Crowe, Samoan, sewerage, South Africa, SPQR, tattoos, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, November 6, 2017

. The average salary of professors at Dublin University is £530. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 14 1907 . The persecution of Christians is now worse than at any time in history. Toto’s ‘Africa’ is one of Myleene Klass’s all-time favourites. The Hillsborough disaster is still in the news. Simon Bolivar, a Venezuelan military and […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Africa, betting, Ceylon, China, Christmas, Colombia, culture, Dublin, education, employment, fear, finance, football, grindstones, Hillsborough, homosexuality, jerk-jobs, Kevin Spacey, Legoland, Leonard Woolf, music, Myleene Klass, Nelson Evening Mail, newspapers, novels, persecution, politics, radio, religion, revolution, sex, Simon Bolivar, Toto, trees, Venezuela, Virginia Woolf, war, Windsor | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 30, 2017

. The Queen won a first prize for bantams at the King’s Lynn Fur and Feather Society’s show. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909 . In LA there is a chess set designed for the East India Company, featuring Sikh soldiers vs Afghans. Among a certain kind of people, being ‘passionate about Israel/Palestine’ […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged (il)literacy, Afghans, bantams, birds, Bobby Kennedy, Brett Dean, butter, chess, Communism, cricket, death, Django Reinhardt, education, England, finance, Germany, government, Iceland, Israel, King Alfred, King's Lynn, liberal arts, Los Angeles, music, Nelson Evening Mail, opera, Palestine, politics, queens, Rain Men, sailors, Sam Craft, sea-faring, sex, Sikhs, South Benfleet, tattoos, the East India Company, Tierra del Fuego, traffic, Truth, work, WWII | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 23, 2017

. All over China temples have been turned into schools with surprising alacrity. — The Nelson Evening Mail, July 26 1906 . The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk. Though rare, there have been exactly 201 documented cases of spontaneous combustion. J Sainbury plc is cutting 2000 Human Resources employees. The collective noun for brown […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged actors, anatomy, birds, China, Crete, criticism, death, Donald Trump, education, Everton, fire, fish, French, George W Bush, Journalism, men, music, Nelson Evening Mail, nouns, October, Paul Celan, poets, religion, Renault, Sainsbury's, sea-faring, translation, vans, work, writing | Comments (0)

Chinese food (after Jung Chang)

Saturday, October 21, 2017

. Ancient Chinese proverb The most capable woman cannot make a meal without food. Chinese Communist Party saying A capable woman can make a meal without food. .

Filed in Non-fictions | Tagged China, Chinese, Jung Chang, Mao Zedong, micro-non-fiction, proverbs, Truth | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 16, 2017

. Only about three in every hundred amateur novel-writers find their way into print, except at their own expense. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 22 1907 . The erection of a verandah is a useful way to extend one’s living quarters. Seven American states observe Abraham Lincoln’s birthday as a public holiday. There is only one […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Abraham Lincoln, America, architecture, atheism, babies, Barack Obama, breasts, Britain, Chiang Kai-shek, China, Christianity, class, Comic Sans, Communism, crime, domestic affairs, education, Eskimos, finance, French, Germany, grammar, holidays, John le Carré, Judaism, Mormonism, Nelson Evening Mail, novels, religion, sharks, synthetic fibres, the Irish, the Soviet Union, translation, vision, war, writing | Comments (0)

An Oxford squaddie

Saturday, October 14, 2017

From deer park to gun park… . Sixteen years ago, American and British forces hurled themselves into Afghanistan the same week I arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford. I didn’t give them much thought – although the ‘War on Terror’ was immediately everywhere. I had an Egyptology degree to get to grips with; and choral evensong […]

Filed in feature, Journalism | Tagged Afghanistan, army, education, Frank Ledwidge, George MacDonald Fraser, Honourable Artillery Company, Max Boot, me, Oxford University, singing, TE Lawrence, The Oldie, war, Yorkshire | Comments (0)

Turning Japanese stomachs

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima Penguin, 170pp, £8.99 . Born two years after the Great Earthquake of 1923, in ‘not too good a section of Tokyo’, Kochan is a sickly child, brought up by stultifying parents and a morbid grandmother. His first reliable memory is of the ‘night-soil’ man, and he immediately becomes […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged army, autobiography, education, Guido Reni, homosexuality, Japan, JK Huysmans, Joan of Arc, Magnus Hirschfeld, Nobel Prize for Literature, novels, Oscar Wilde, sex, suicide, The Amorist, transvestism, violence, war, WW2, Yukio Mishima | Comments (0)

Veterans of modern wars

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

In a mid-September interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Baron Richards of Herstmonceux (GCB, CBE, DSO, DL – better known as General David Richards, former Chief of the Defence Staff) made a comment to the effect that “a part-time soldier cannot be as effective as someone who’s devoted his life to it and puts on a […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged Afghanistan, army, Baron Richards of Herstmonceux, Brigadier James Roddis, Bruce Dickinson, children, David Dickinson, death, Ed Drummond-Baxter, employment, food, Honourable Artillery Company, Iraq, Iron Maiden, Jack Sadler, Ted Heath, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)