by beatriceotto | Apr 20, 2018 | language & translation
Another angle on language and how it shapes or at least influences our perception of time. Here Adam Nicolson discusses the anchoring of tense in many languages, while others allow things to happen in a more imprecise location in time. ‘The sky is the great...
by beatriceotto | Jun 20, 2017 | triologisms
We’ve been wondering if there is a way to deploy a sheep, goat or deer to mow the lawn without destroying the plant beds – an eco-friendlier option including the reduction of noise pollution. Clearly, the only way would be to create a circular lawn with a...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
When I think of such a sky, I think of Greece. ‘The following morning, the weather had changed to a pale iris-blue sky.’ Source: Adam Nicolson, Sea Room: An Island Life (London: Harper Collins, 2013 (2002)), p....
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
Looking up this flower (potentilla anserina), I discover the identity of a mystery plant I bought from a seedling community in Geneva. It was in the ‘edible’ section but didn’t come with a label. Now it’s about a foot in height and diameter,...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
Puffins are lovable partly for their curiosity and quirkiness. Here Nicolson imagines them trying to figure out what manner of fish he is. ‘They are not frightened. They gather around you, swimming up to you, looking curiously sideways at this new kind of...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
Among other things, Sea Room is a study of human strategies for survival over millennia, of the fragility and tenacity of a culture built in a climate-pounded place of meagre resources. These islands were inhabited from the Bronze Age until the population declined...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
The clingon power of the barnacle is astonishing, as anyone who ever tried to prise them off the rocks in childhood acts of discovery will know. My memory of summer holidays by the English sea, or day trips to the seaside, includes endless coasts of weed-slithered...
by beatriceotto | Jun 13, 2017 | triologisms
This evokes a few childhood seaside holidays in England, hopping over seaweed-slippery rocks, to play and paddle in rock pools. One such holiday was in a caravan near Hunstanton with our grandparents. I don’t remember seeing much of the sun, but I was happy to...
by beatriceotto | Jun 11, 2017 | put in a good word
Normally referring to the moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery, perhaps understanding the real situation for the first time. I liked Nicolson’s use of it in describing Keats’ discovery of Homer: ‘Keats had read and stared in...
