Back in January I set out to write ten things each month so that at the end of this year you knew 120 more things about me: things I like and things I dislike. Just for the record, and seeing as it's the end of the year, here is the complete list …
Brown, Fergusson, Lawrence & Lees; Tracks & Signs of the Birds of Britain & Europe
John Guillim, A Display of Heraldrie
Diary of Samuel Pepys
AN Wilson, After the Victorians
Florence Greenberg; Jewish Cookery
Nick McCamley; Secret Underground Cities
Douglas Adams, Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
Charles Nicholls; The Reckoning
Music I Like
Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Beatles, Abbey Road
Yes, Close to the Edge
Monteverdi, 1610 Vespers
Caravan, In the Land of Pink & Grey
Carl Orff, Carmina Burana
Amanda Palmer, Map of Tasmania
William Byrd, The Battell
Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly
Moody Blues, Octave
Handel, Messiah
JS Bach, Christmas Oratorio
Food I Like
Curry
Pasta
Sausage
Butter Beans
Whitebait
Avocado
Cheese
Smoked Fish, especially Eel
Chips
Swiss Chard
Pizza
Treacle Tart
Food & Drink I Dislike
Egg Custard
Carrots
Sweetcorn
Pernod
Sheep's Eyes
Green Tea
Tapioca
Absinthe
Marron Glacé
Milk
Sweet Potatoes
Butternut Squash
Words I Like
Cunt
Crenellate
Merkin
Merhari
Amniomancy
Vespiary
Numpty
Halberd
Verisimilitude
Persiflage
Mendicant
Antepenultimate
Quotes I Like
If you don't concern yourself with your wife's cat, you will lose something irretrievable between you. [Haruki Murakami]
When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree. The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess. We are not going to change it. Our job is to straighten out our own lives. [Joseph Campbell]
The purpose of our lives is to be happy. [Dalai Lama]
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. [Flannery O’Connor]
I like small furry animals — as long as they're tasty. [Lisa Jardine]
The covers of this book are too far apart. [Ambrose Bierce]
It will pass, sir, like other days in the army. [Anthony Powell]
The gap between strategic rhetoric and operational reality remains dangerously wide. [Prof. Gordon Hewitt]
Pro bono publico, nil bloody panico. [Rear-Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan-Giles]
Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know? [Groucho Marx]
The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. [JBS Haldane]
If we don't change our direction we're liable to end up where we're going. [Chinese Proverb]
Eccentric looks at life through the thoughts of a retired working thinker