John Baker’s Blog

For St Patrick’s Day MA Peel mused:
I met a psychiatrist once who believed that the national Irish affinity for drinking was a product of centuries of oppression/emasculation by the British.
The post goes on to review the film Kings from Tom Collins, and the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson
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When The Cat Kin didn’t sell enough [...]

Some people have confidence from the word go. They are born into the world and have a quick squint at it between womb and cradle and think to themselves, Hey, I can handle this. No problem. It’s as if they’ve arrived here from a much worse place and they know they’ve landed on their feet. [...]

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children has been banned in Malaysia. It joins Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised, Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues and a host of other texts which have been proscribed by:
… some barely literate little Napoleon - to borrow Pak Lah’s term - sitting behind a KDN desk in Johor Bahru, (who) has decided that the [...]

I’ve told this story before, but every telling leaves something wanting. Here I am having another go at it.
I think it was a Monday night. We play on Tuesdays now, but back then there was a game on a Monday. We were on table 13, which is way over in the far corner, the one [...]