Happy RLS Day! Robert Louis Stevenson is 168 today.
Don’t worry, Bob. You don’t look a day over 43.
He really doesn’t though, does he? Look at the light in those wee eyes! To look at him, you wouldn’t believe that he would be dead by the end of the next year.
Ikutaro Kakehashi died on Saturday at the age of 87. A check check of the Interwebz doesn’t reveal the cause of his death, and he was Japanese – but he has to get a Great British Strokes-shaped post.
The Brexit referendum could have been an invigorating exercise in participatory democracy, addressing important issues about subsidiarity, regulation, and the like. Instead, it was presented as a discussion of a post-Brexit wishlist in which dues no longer payable to the EU could be spent on [insert cause of your choice].
On 2 May 2015, Princess Waynetta Diana Alexandra Windsor was delivered unto the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and a grateful nation. While the birth was being announced on Twitter, the journos who needed to stand in front of a thing were gathered to await the announcement of the annunciation on an easel on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.
A forecourt, Saturday
In a kind of Bizarro Spiderman moment, said journos were already concerned about the effects the terrible pressures of privilege without responsibility might have on young Waynetta.
I’ve decided to include this post in the “Great British Strokes” section of the site. I had it in my head that – given his transatlantic aspect – Robert McCrum might not be, or define himself as, British. Maybe he doesn’t. His resumé does put one somewhat in mind of that of Bill Bryson, who seems very confused about all that stuff.
Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth mentioned the other day that it’s been over a year since we’ve had a Digesta Plaga/Stroke Digest. And with uncanny timing, here’s the latest round-up of all the stroke news that’s fit to print. Get to the end, and we’ve got strokebots!
“Alda news that’s fit to print” (with apologies to Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland).
One of the first things you’ll notice strolling around Edinburgh is the collection of private schools that seem to have dropped out of context and out of the sky. Pudgily gothic Fettes. The ersatz Red Square on the Thames of Stewart’s-Melville.
Fettes: James Bond’s alma mater after getting kicked out of Eton
Last week, I was wandering along Lauriston Place, heading in a roundabout sort of way towards Cockburn Street to see if the t-shirt shop had replenished its stock of John and Yokos. Heading east along the street, I was distracted from George Heriot’s School looming from an Edinburghian distance by the sounds of Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review on BBC Radio Five Live.
[The apoplectic.me Tiny Letter distribution usually riffs off in a different direction from the week’s post. Check it out here.]
A quick plug before we move onto Britishness, strokes, and pile-driving Aussie rock: Nerd Bait will be premiering their latest short-form musical, Wrong Word Write Time (the fictional life story of a pilot suffering from aphasia) as part of Illicit Ink’s Underground night at Edinburgh’s Bongo Club on Sunday, 4 May. Please come, tell your friends, and please share and tweet these links: 1, 2. Thanks!