Sam Redlark

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 29th January, 2023. The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ Is progress possible – or will our problems always be with us? image generated by Craiyon Sam Redlark is unwell. The following entry has been fittingly penned (or rather typed) by Graham Guest. ~ “Give me some elbowroom, Brighty,” said Anthony Mabe. “You are rather encroaching on my territory, if you don't mind me saying.” He expanded the pages of his copy of The Telegraph to their fullest extent, indignantly rustling the paper between his clenched fists in what amounted to a threat display. The waves of heat that were coming off the fire were causing the edges of the broadsheet ...

“When I die, when I am fully grown...” image generated by Craiyon Everyday, for years, I would listen to Prison - a spoken word record by the poet Steven Jesse Bernstein. The album was released posthumously, in 1992, on the Sub Pop label, a few months after its creator's strange and untimely death. Prison is a hard album to ignore: An unrelenting barrage of disturbing imagery – the sweepings of a broken and insolvent world – brutal in its self-loathing and unyielding in its nihilism. Even the occasional glimmers of humour are weaponised by their author to enlarge a hodgepodge of self-inflicted wounds. There isn't an ounce of hope to be found anywhere across the 55-minute runtime. Put it on in the background, at sufficient volume, in polite company, and it will soon extinguish all conversation, until it commands the full attention of everyone in the room. “I am considered a very dark poet,” Bernstein once told a TV interviewer. During the period when I was obsessed with Priso...

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 22nd January, 2023. The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ Why is frost so beautiful? image generated by Craiyon It was a Sunday afternoon in July, 2022. That unbearable sweltering summer. Kirsty Briggs, Yvonne (I don't know, or can't remember, her last name) and Erik Malin walked into the village to see if the shop had opened. Earlier that morning when we went, the door had been locked and the interior was darkened. We loitered by the rail, overlooking the showy Victorian river stairs that protruded from the slimy brick foundation of the watermill. A rose-petalled cornucopia of ponybit spilled from the gaps in the mortar. The dark, h...

Below is a response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 5th June 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. ~ Why does tinned food come in a 400g can? image generated by Craiyon I recently spent just under an hour in the company of Patrick Ruff, while he waited for a connecting train at York Station. Even though we had not seen one another in over four years, and had seldom communicated during that time, he spent most of our precious minutes together expounding upon a great list of small woes that plagued his daily existence. Chief among these was a recent discovery that his favourite game soup was no longer sold in tins, but in what he described as “a sort of biodegradable laminated pouch”. “I couldn't find it anywhere on the shelves in Farthings,” he rep...

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 15th January, 2023. The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ Why is the surname Farmer so uncommon when there were large numbers of farmers for so long? image generated by Craiyon “If near every man within your narrow horizons is a farmer, then you must look towards those extraneous personal details that serve to distinguish him from his neighbour.” So said Robert May, as he cast his eyeline from the tremoring seat of his tractor, across the scattered village of golden haystacks that dotted the stubbled cornfield, while inwardly his mind's eye roved freely in the past, turning over the old ground and unearthing pieces of history in anecdota...

Below is a response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 12th June 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. ~ At what age do we become capable of love? image generated by Craiyon “Our next door neighbour is the London Underground,” said Ann Cromack, as she led me, at a brisk pace, through the labyrinthine sub-basement of the British Museum. “We share a common wall with the Central Line,” she clarified, inserting a key into the lock of Room 45, which is also known as 'The Temple of Aphrodite'. The name conjures images of Doric columns, bleached by the glare of the Mediterranean sun; a far cry from the disquieting reality of wall-to-wall cabinets, filled from top to bottom with disembodied arms - rendered mostly in marble, many missing fingers - all la...

 This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 8th January, 2023. The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead. This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use. ~ From ancient history to the present, which civilisation had the fewest wars? image generated by Craiyon In the unmerciful opinion of the economist, Richard Winch, who does not mince his words, the Kingdom of Véiergrenzen is “a smouldering bullet wound in the heart of Europe, where money of dubious provenance goes to be baptised in blood.” Winch is no stranger to pejoratives. For years, he has been commonly referred to as 'the Bastard of Slough' – a description that many would regard as apt, and that a great many more would consider as erring on the side of being too kind. None...