August 2018 One of the pleasures of summer in my old stomping grounds in the States is the coming of fruit season. After the long winter months when the freezer is the only thing that produces fruit Nature cuts loose and all manner of things come to ripeness over a period of a few months. I know on which side my bread is buttered, or to use a another equally trite phrase, I'm smart [...]
August 2018 This is my intellectual BDSM: watching Jonathan Meades videos on YouTube and revelling in his eloquence, his sharpness of insight, the enormity of his range of knowledge, then feeling stupid afterward. It's a mental analogue of shibari, Japanese rope bondage, done with natural fibers and exquisite attention to detail. But I doubt any great difference in effect could be distinguished if you used that nylon cord that ties down the tarp on that [...]
August 2018 Yanbu is on the other side of Saudi Arabia from where I lived and worked for five years on the Gulf Coast in Dhahran. I had heard about the city because it's one of two industrial developments undertaken by the Royal Commission (info here), the other being Jubail, which is within easy striking distance of Dhahran. I'd been to Jeddah a couple times on business but not out into the environs, and [...]