Sam Redlark

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on the 26th February, 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 there a window on a washing machine but not on a dishwasher? image generated by Craiyon It was during the post-war years of the 20th Century that the now-ubiquitous dishwasher embarked upon a cultural and technological journey; one that would result in its gradual acceptance as an indispensable aid in the modern kitchen. It lined up alongside those other miracles of the modern age – the fridge/freezer, and the gas or electric cooker. By the late 1970s, when dishwashers were beginning to become commonplace, the applied technology had been in existence for almost a century. ...

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 12th February, 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. ~ If the brain uses the most calories of any organ, can you think yourself thin? image generated by Craiyon “You will never transform yourself into the hero of the beach by attempting to prove the Riemann Hypothesis,” declared William Goaman. “Trust me when I say, from hard won experience, that it doesn't build upper body strength. Any gains you make remain in the brain. In an outdoor environment, especially one where volleyball is played, some bruiser with a vaguely self-deterministic moniker (Biff, for example) who has an intuitive understanding of the way that sand particles beh...

This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on 5th February, 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. ~ What would be included on an up-to-date list of the seven wonders of the world? image generated by Craiyon I have limited my selection to three places that I have visited, and can vouch for as being sufficiently 'wondrous' to qualify. The Hotline Traversing the Ploskiysneg (Southern Russian Tundra) and therefore, in the present political turmoil, inaccessible to Westerners, the Hotline is a miracle of 1960s engineering filtered through the prism of the previous decade's science fiction utopianism. It is a ground-based monorail that uses guided fluctuations in the track tem...

crossposted from r/Imaginary London image generated by Craiyon It was a puddly Tuesday morning in late September. A gusting wind, that pushed and pulled in a multitude of directions, was blowing rain down from an opaque sky the colour of cathedral marble. The fallen leaves lay plastered against the wet pavement like loose pieces of hammered brass. They has scarcely settled before they were ground into paste by the relentless comings and goings of Londoners as they went about their business. “Good heavens!” exclaimed Patricia Bridge as we exited Gloucester Road Underground Station. A fur-trimmed leather glove, tailored to her exacting specifications from the hides of three different species of animal, pinned down a matching fur hat, that had already been blown crooked. Her right arm locked itself tightly around my bent elbow. I guided her underneath the awning of a nearby florists. During our excursion, I had unwittingly taken on the additional role of porter. The handles of her enormou...

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...