Culture - Etic

Illustration: men and women in mid-century office dress dancing and waving papers on a red background

The tales AI can tell

What if journalism could wear a digital face? Or sing?

Miller in white overalls gesturing beside a stone kiln at Barony Mill

Bannocks in Orkney

It is unlikely you have come across bere bannocks if you haven’t been to Orkney.

Large ferry with a Viking-figure livery crossing choppy water towards a town

So I waited to board the ferry, rubbing my hands in glee. I was in a place called Scrabster. It is difficult to be overwhelmed with excitement when you are in settlement with a name that is a cross between a skin ailment and a crustacean with five pincers, but I swear there was glee all over my hand

Pour-over coffee maker and a glass of black coffee with scattered coffee beans on a table

Kerosene in a Ferrari

I used to drink instant coffee. In those days, I thought it tasted good. It was cheap and convenient, and I drank it black and piping hot the way they did it in manly movies.

AI-generated painting of an office, figures round a desk piled with papers, one slumped

When satire slid smoothly from a scholar

Sometime in the late 1930s or early 40s, a newly minted Canadian schoolteacher by the name of Laurence J Peter saw a door sign in the august institution he was then employed at. It said: ‘Emergency Exit. Authorised Personnel Only’.

Gravel path through heathland with yellow gorse and pines at sunset

Sunburn in an English village

During an intermission in the lockdowns last year, for want of better entertainment, my wife and I moved house, swapping the seaside town we had long inhabited for a quieter place inland.

Dunvegan Castle on a rocky outcrop above a seaweed-strewn shore under an overcast sky

The Kannur connection

The MacLeods of Scotland have much in common with the Malayalees of Kannur. In fact, they are practically cousins.

Green clifftop field leading to a headland with ruins, a red-and-white daymark across the water

In search of Jesus

Thinking of Jesus, I climbed into the ferry at Fowey Town Quay, paid £2.50 to the captain, and set sail for the distant shores of Polruan which loomed out of green waters some 365 metres away.