Monthly Archives: April 2006

Express delivery

…the trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail, heart-shaking when heard screaming on the wind and proclaiming itself through the darkness to every village or solitary house on its route, has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler. That’s Thomas DeQuincey, mourning the shift of nineteenth century mail delivery …

April 18, 2006 – 9:41 am | By Mark Phillipson | Posted in Metawriting, Reading | Comments (1)

Transplanting the family tree

What did you do on your spring vacation? Me, I communed with ancestors — and not just the vividly alive ones. My mother had collected a good deal of basic facts and figures about her family and my father’s, and had fed this data into genealogical software installed on her computer. All that rich data …

April 5, 2006 – 2:32 pm | By Mark Phillipson | Posted in Family, Play | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)