I know this will probably sound totally surreal – but I wasn’t interested in soul music until I went on a placement at the BBC GMR back in February 2005. Yes, I heard names like Aretha Fra...
I remembered listening to a short talk by Slavoj Žižek on Channel 4 last year, in which he discussed (very briefly) Charlie Chaplin’s film, The Great Dictator. Although the image of a dictator w...
There must be some curse that doesn’t let me see La Belle et la Bête by Jean Cocteau. Every time it’s on TV I either forget or cannot find time to watch it. Naturally, when I received an e...
This text I wrote recently on the train, in Russian. It is a chapter in my reflections on Manchester, which I provisionally call ‘The City of Optimists’. Some of them I published in Russia...
Like many other people in Manchester tonight, I’ve just returned from the BBC Blogging Workshop. No winds could stop us this time, but no winds were blowing, anyway. The goal of the workshop was...
Hans Christian Andersen wrote about the storm that shifted the signboards. It looks like the winter frosts have left England more or less unscathed, whereby all signboards remained in their places. Ho...
When I went to Bolton a week ago, I didn’t manage to take any decent shots of Ye Olde Man & Scythe, one of Britain’s oldest pubs. (Don’t tell me anybody that North West of Englan...
There may be something good about visiting an optician. The visit (and the news of your becoming more shortsighted after three years – as if I expected a miracle to happen instead!) may inspire ...
This post is going to be very short, and there’s a big chance that by the time I finish writing it, it’ll stop snowing, as well. But – at the moment – it is snowing! Alas, I...
It looks like this winter Britain and Russia have become inexplicably and inextricably connected by some changes in weather. As you know, I was born and grew up in Moscow. Normally, at this time of th...