…The Crimean War began.

Tennyson’s message about the glamorous futility of warfare is still (and probably always will be) suitable for these lively modern times:

Half a league half a league
  Half a league onward
All in the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade
Charge for the guns’ he said
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d?
Not tho’ the soldiers knew
  Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
  Rode the six hundred.

You can hear a recording of Tennyson reading the poem on the internet, thanks to the British Library. Curiously, Tennyson wrote a second poem entitled The Charge of the Heavy Brigade in 1882, commemorating their more successful attack - it never caught on.

From an otherwise bland AP article on Murakami - I love the idea of a Murakami translator convention…

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has been translated into three dozen languages, had cafes across continents named after his novels and even inspired a cocktail spiked with cannabis at a Moscow bar….

In an attempt to understand the sensation, translators of his work from 13 countries — although not the hermetic novelist himself — gathered in Tokyo this weekend, proof that Murakami transcends national cultures.

My favourite piece of praise for Murakami was from William Gibson. He was doing a Q&A in London for Pattern Recognition, and someone asked him who he was reading right now. Gibson, smilingly, responded that he was becoming obsessed with Haruki Murakami, who was actually doing a reading in London that night. He further pointed out that, if he weren’t contracted into his own reading, he’d be there right now.

Quickmap makes great little Flash movies showing bus routes, where little bus numbers move along the streets.

It’s a nice visual idea to sort out your bus trip, especially when bus routes can snake around and change depending on direction.

Buses from Kings Cross are here, and other major stations are linked at the bottom of the page.

More maps are available for central London at Vincinitee, and for Holborn at the 4Holborn Business Improvement District website.

Now someone needs to bring them together on a nicely indexed page, searchable by route number, origin and destination. Why not licence them to TfL, whose online bus maps are well-intentioned but near-useless huge PDFs.

GENEVA (Reuters) - IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, ranked 4th richest man in the world, drives a 15-year-old car and always flies economy class, in part to inspire his 90,000 employees worldwide to see the virtue of frugality…

Asked to confirm he drove an old Volvo, he said: “She is nearly new, just 15 years old, or something like that.”

Interviewer Darius Rochebin teased that Ikea employees were always told to write on both sides of the paper.

“Why not? If there is such a thing as good leadership, it is to give a good example. I have to do so for all the Ikea employees,” Kamprad retorted.

(Full article)
(more…)

Anyone that’s ever seen Faithless live will have an idea of how good Maxi Jazz would be as an MC - and here he is, hosting a night in Brixton. Rap, raggae, r n’ b, jazz funk, etc… sounds excellent…
(more…)

Hello Spring!!!

Yah, I know its not much but I just have to say what a gorgeous day it was today. And that it made me very very happy… British Summertime is starting on Sunday, so I can only hope it gets better…

Wahey!!!

From the kind people at the LRB:

There is still time to sign up for our next 10%-off shopping evening on Tuesday March 28th (simply e-mail the shop). You are invited to join us for wine and to buy books with a 10% discount. By all means bring a guest, but because of the popularity of these events please RSVP as early as possible so that we can manage the evenings as efficiently as possible (books@lrbshop.co.uk or 0207 269 9030). Quote ‘LRB 10%’ when placing your order on this date.

(more…)

All over the press today:

Heather Mills, anti-landmine crusader, has convinced 77 of her A- and B-list friends to donate their old footware to an eBay auction. So if you’ve ever wanted to sniff Wayne Rooney’s trainers or explore Anna Kournikova’s dainty boots… I don’t actually want to hear about it.

But the auctions kick off at 16.00 this afternoon on eBay.co.uk and will run until 2 April.

Bedale’s, one of the posh fooderies in Borough Market, have just relaunched their web site.

It’s well worth a look if you feel like treating your mom (mother’s day?), dad (father’s day?) or significant other (favourite loud-mouth blogger?) to one of their mammoth hampers of goodies.

Better than the website, go there in person - unlike the more transient market stalls, Bedale’s is open during the week. Their wine cellar is a hoot to go play in. Last summer, we enlisted their wine expert to help us plan a dinner party - rather than the conventional methods of choosing the wine, he demanded to know the ‘personality’ of everyone around the table, and then chose a very eccentric (and delicious) combination of wines to match them. It was a lot of fun, and a good talking point for the entire evening…
(more…)

If you’re into that sort of thing, the FT is doing all sorts of shiny live coverage of Gordon Brown’s great budget reveal. It starts around… now.

Budget video. Budget podcasts. Budget predictions. I’m hoping for a budget t-shirts and collectible programme.