Sam Redlark

Below is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 14th August, 2022 The comment has since been deleted from the website. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented under the terms of fair use. ~ What are the fewest separate foods you could eat and still have a healthy, balanced diet? image generated by Craiyon For as long as I have known Lorna Swash, she has worn her hair in the style of a 1970s social worker: Cut shoulder-length using the kitchen scissors, with a dark listless fringe in need of shampoo, framing a round face, that is prominently dimpled with a pair of rosy cheeks, and drawn into a chin that is too small and incongruous with her other features. For five years it was ridiculously easy to pick her out in a crowd: Just look for the faded red anorak with the detachable sleeves. I never saw her take it off, even during in the h...

image generated by Craiyon Below is my final response to the weekly Notes & Queries series that appears on The Guardian newspaper website, every Sunday, at around 2pm. It is described by the paper as a “long-running series that invites readers to send in questions and answers on everything from trivial flights of fancy to the most profound concepts.” I do not expect my comment to appear on the site. When I posted it, my account had been placed in a state of pre-moderation – a fence-sitting, but ultimately cowardly, means of censorship by stealth. Ordinarily on the site, if a comment is submitted and then subsequently removed by the jannies, a bookmark will remain, informing readers that the post was deleted for violating community standards. If an account is under pre-moderation and a comment is not approved by the jannies, then no such marker will appear. It will be as if the contribution never existed, and as if the writer never participated in the conversation. On a website t...

image generated by Craiyon Tragically the slo-mo drug from the film 'Dredd' has got its hooks into the jannies who moderate The Guardian website. They can now only delete comments several days after they were posted. We wish them a speedy recovery and hope that their powers of censorship will eventually return to normal speed. Those wishing to read my belatedly-erased contribution to a discussion regarding the outer limits of eyelash growth may find it below. ~ There was a time when turning the page on a redundant chapter in your life was as easy as leaving your job at the textile mill, casting off the name chosen for you by your parents (in this case 'Margaret Jacklin') like it was a set of clothes that no longer fit you properly, and prancing seductively onto the stage of a theatre in another town to perform under the moniker 'Flapper Marrow.' Later, after the naked spectacle of vaudeville had lost some of its lustre, and the giddiness of freedom had resettled...

Image generated by Craiyon Crossposted to r/ImaginaryLondon The remnants of the buffet were being haphazardly cleared away; the uneaten food decanted from the shiny paper plates and onto a single large, oval-shaped, cardboard platter with a scalloped rim; everything was draped in sheets of cling-film; one item carelessly piled on top of another, in readiness for being carried indoors; the papery skirts of the yellow table cloths flapping in the light breeze. The garden party, that had previously crowded around the long trestle tables, had unanchored itself from the lawn terrace outside the vicarage, and dwindled into smaller groups. These were now slowly drifting apart from each other. Some were already encroaching upon the fringes of the graveyard as if carried there on invisible currents. “It speaks poorly of our bonds of Christian fellowship when we can only unite in the presence of sausage rolls,” observed Jon Scaife. I had a mouth full of one of the aforementioned sausage rolls, b...