Browsing Archive: the-snug, 2012
Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, January 27, 2012,
Happy 256th birthday to that great billiards player, imbiber, letter-writer, ladies' man and (oh yes) pretty good composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, known as WAM to his friends and admirers. I've been tending to ignore this blog, and to let commemorative occasions pass uncommemorated, but Mozart has given me so much pleasure, and will continue to do so to the end of my days--and will do so to generations yet unborn--that I had to say "Herzlichen Gluckwuensch, Maestro." Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Monday, January 23, 2012,
Of all the drinking cultures I'm familiar with, and they are legion, England's is the booziest, not in the sense of actual amounts consumed but as a cultural phenomenon, one that celebrates intoxication, one--as an article in a recent issue of The Economist points out--refined and exalted by the upper, not working, classes. "Do you drink?" Jennie Jerome's American father asked her upper-class English suitor, Lord Randolph Churchill. "Of course I drink, man," snapped Lord Randolph. "I'm a gent... Continue reading ...
Posted by Roger Boylan on Monday, January 9, 2012,
Dublin Grey brick upon brick,
Declamatory bronze
On sombre pedestals -
O'Connell, Grattan, Moore -
And the brewery tugs and the swans
On the balustraded stream
And the bare bones of a fanlight
Over a hungry door
And the air soft on the cheek
And porter running from the taps
With a head of yellow cream
And Nelson on his pillar
Watching his world collapse.
This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her...
Continue reading ...
