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Wandering around town
I’ve had days I wanted to do that. Sometimes after a bad haircut! I saw these really cute cups, bowls, and place card holders at Urban Outfitters Flying Tiger had these cute ladybug/ladybird design on...
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Phrases you don’t hear anymore
This is a photo taken by Jack McLeod showing that the town where I was born (Grahamstown) and the city where I grew up (Port Elizabeth) no longer exist in a way. They are now Makhanda and Gqeberha. I...
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Names for grandmothers
The Afrikaans word for granny is Ouma Some people feel ‘I am too young to be a granny; don’t call me that!’ In addition, parental and grandparental names are more complicated nowadays because the...
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Thoughts about cultural trends
I have written previously about how people today can look exactly the same fashion-wise as people who grew up in the 1970s. See my article on cool grannies. I wrote The photo above was taken in 1968,...
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Feather palaces and fashions
I wondered if this lamp ‘shade’ was made of ostrich feathers. You don’t see ostrich feathers often anymore. In South Africa, ostrich feather dusters are quite common but that’s about it. South Africa...
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Body art and ageing
I follow this Instagram account, not so much for the body art, but for the beautiful depictions of people of age. We don’t really celebrate wrinkles and the huge achievement of getting to high numbers...
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I realised today how long I have been using Apple products…
I can remember almost all of these. I hated Sierra or El Capitan (I cannot remember which it was now) because it crashed one of my MacBooks. Recently though, updates have been painless. I have been...
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The Swedish Museum of Drinking Culture
This fact that this museum exists surprised me because Sweden, being in the vodka belt*, has historically had a public health problem with binge drinking. So much so that there is a state monopoly on...
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I had no clue what this was…
I thought it was perhaps to tamp down tobacco in a pipe It is actually…
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Who knew this about forks?
I found this really interesting, mainly because people eat with their hands way more often in Africa than they do in Europe. I noticed this as soon as I moved to Sweden because people would eat a...
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Dr Oliver Sacks on motorcyclists
Motorcyclists were a friendly lot; we waved to one another when we passed on the road, made conversation easily if we met at a café. We formed a sort of romantic classless society within society at...
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Indicators of wealth
two-ply toilet paper colour television swimming pool a second car overseas holidays horses a phone in my bedroom —— I didn’t have any of them!
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Where does Halloween come from?
Halloween has evolved and been influenced by a number of different cultures and religions, the most important of which are paganism, the Romans, the Celts (the people of Ireland, Scotland, Britain,...
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Is this a case of pure sexism?
What reason could there be for enforcing this rule. Surely the aim is to be as comfortable as possible? If the women have to wear bikinis, why do the men not have to wear Speedos?
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I love the work of Stefan Draschan
I love the work of photographer Stefan Draschan – he looks at our world in interesting ways. From people matching museum artworks (none of them staged, just captured with a great deal of patience) and...
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