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Blog postI don't like to make rash promises, but with luck this will be my last word on the subject of Covid-19. I've made up a kind of Venn diagram which will enable you to forecast, with stunning accuracy, how things are likely to go Covid-wise in your country, city, street or neighbourhood. Here's the diagram:
The diagram plots vaccination rate against infection rate. So there are four possibilities: 1. low vaccination, low infection; 2. low vaccination, high infection; 3. high vaccination, -
Blog postI first heard the expression food truck in Christchurch, New Zealand. Ophelie, the daughter of our next door neighbours, had moved to New Zealand with her husband and together they started a well-reviewed French restaurant in Christchurch. Despite the good reviews and good bookings, they felt it was a lot of hard work for not enough reward. They decided to buy a food truck instead. It must have worked, because they're still in Christchurch.
My next food truck was the one pictured abo -
Blog postIf America emerges still standing and still smiling after the combined and related horrors of Donald Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic, it will be thanks to Americans like Ben Fox.
I've never met Ben, though he lives not all that far away, in northern Portugal. He first entered my life way back in February of this year, when he tracked me down via my old web site and explained that he was creating a new book web site called Shepherd, where authors could plug one of their own books for -
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Blog postWe’re just back from Paris, a trip which marks our first substantial voyage in 16 months and our first trip to Paris in 20 months. Since you ask … yes, it was great. Paris seemed a bit scruffier and a bit quieter than usual. But it was a joy to be back in familiar restaurants, now fully open, and to go to the Opera Bastille to see the ballet Romeo and Juliet before a live audience. The picture above shows part of the audience, all wearing their mandatory masks. In general Parisians are a stro
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Blog postIt wouldn't be France if food didn't enter the equation somewhere. For years I've agonised over whether I'd been a total hypocrite after publishing my book A Good Place To Hide. The book tells the story of Protestant villagers in the mountains of eastern France who hid some 5,000 refugees, mostly Jews, during World War II. If ever I give a talk about the book, I always conclude by asking the audience: do you approve of what those villagers did? The answer is invariably yes. Then how come peop
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Blog postA handful of newspapers and other journals around the world are starting to pick up on a theme I tried to give voice to in my last blog entry on 30 May. Here's some reinforcement.
Most countries around the world are now counting the wrong numbers when evaluating their progress against the Covid-19 pandemic. If you read in your local newspaper or hear on the radio or television that infections are down along with deaths and hospitalisations where you live, take no comfort whatsoever a -
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Blog postRant alert.
Sorry, folks, but I'm well sick of people trying not to sound smug while asking me how things are in France Covid-19-wise. The implication is that we are suffering grievously here while things are MUCH better where they come from. Poor old you is the unstated message. Well here are the facts for France, the UK, the US and Australia.
France (population 67 million) has so far administered 10,742,886 second jabs, which means that some 16% of the population is fully -
Blog postChristopher Guest's wonderful faux documentary about the folk music pandemic that swept the world in the 1960s was titled A Mighty Wind. (You can find Christopher Guest himself in the picture above. He's the third red shirt on the right, in the centre of the picture, part of a lunatic parody of The Kingston Trio.) The folk music craze of the 1960s was central to the zeitgeist of that optimistic decade, when Bob Dylan sang through his nose that the times they were a' changin', and Pete Seeger
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Blog postI really don’t know where to begin with this. You are now reading from my ‘new’ web site at www.petegrose.com. At the urging of my then British publisher, I set up my ‘old’ web site at www,petergrose.net way back in 2014. I built both web sites myself, and my hope for them both was that they would help people to find me – Google does this well, for instance – and contact me. My other hope was that the blog would give me a way of communicating directly with everyone without having to ‘sell’ my
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Blog postMake a note of today's date . . . 14 March 2021. It could go down in history as the day Joe Biden was at long last rumbled. Whatever else, it's the day he lost his biggest advantage. How do I know? I read it behind the headlines in that great journal of record and authority The New York Times.
Try it for yourself. These are the headlines in today's NYT. "Joe Biden Knew He Was Onto Something Long Before We Did" (an article about how Joe Biden long before he was elected hinte -
Blog postI wouldn't take too much notice of what follows if I were you: it's the purest speculation. But, as the headline says, I can dream, can't I?
I've been staying up late watching the live coverage of Donald Trump's impeachment. It's some of the best drama I've ever seen, on TV or anywhere else. But, despite a brilliantly illustrated and argued prosecution, everyone seems to think Trump will get away with his part in triggering the Capitol riot, a high crime and misdemeanour if ever ther -
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Blog postA topic which should be a simple matter of counting has become a hotly debated political issue. There is even a left-right split: the left says Covid-19 is a world-wide scourge and we must all suffer to get rid of it; the right says it's just a case of the sniffles and it will go away soon. Why the right would allow itself to be painted into this mindless corner is a mystery to me. If someone you know is dead from Covid-19, or if your local hospital is bursting at the seams and the nightly TV
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Blog postAn article in today's New York Times talks about the very little damage done by the mob that invaded the US Capitol on 6 January. All will be fine, said that august organ, once the last shard of glass has been swept up. At this point I can only say: us too.
The day before the Washington ruckus we left a well-locked house a bit after nine in the morning to do our daily shopping. We were back at about 10 o'clock, to find that there had been an attempted break-in while we were out. It w -
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Blog postThe Law of Unintended Consequences, otherwise known as The Law of Be Careful What You Wish For, swung lustily into action on New Year's Day this year. The illustration above shows the front pages of Le Monde, France's best newspaper, on January 1, 2 and 3. The paper on the left is dated January 1 and 2, and was a numéro double, or double issue, which is not unusual in a holiday season. The front page on the right is for January 3.
It will not have escaped your attention that 1 -
Blog postAs well as being New Year's Day, today is the first day of Britain's total exit from the European Union. The rant that follows first appeared on my old web site on 30 June 2016, exactly a week after the British referendum which led to the exit door. Four and a half years later, I wouldn't change a word of it.
I first arrived in Britain in August 1964, as the London correspondent of The Australian newspaper. The Profumo scandal was still ringing in our ears, the Great Train Robbers ha -
Blog postIf you've read yesterday's blog, you can't say I don't practise what I preach: above is our family Christmas 2020 online. Top left you have my daughter Anouchka and her daughter Dot, both in London; top right is your humble scribe, behind the camera taking this picture, with wife Roslyn on the left, both of us on the Île d'Oléron in France; below is daughter Tamara with husband John, in Taunton, England. Most of the wine glasses are discreetly out of sight, and the orange juice i
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Blog postI’ve been saying to my two daughters and my granddaughter that they should all be recording their experience of the pandemic. Generations yet unborn will want to know from them what it was like, how they coped and what did it change.
I’m going to take a mighty risk and make a few predictions of things to come.
The first and most obvious change is that people who can work from home, will. Expect to see serious change in future in the way lawyers, accountants, publishers, jour -
Blog postAustralian aboriginals use song in a way that is little discussed but potent all the same. Many aboriginal tribes have a kind of witch doctor called a kurdaitcha—there is no written aboriginal language, so the spelling varies—whose job it is, among other things, to kill people by singing them to death. You can see what a kurdaitcha looks like in the picture above.
Now I don’t accuse Roy Zimmerman of being a kurdaitcha or of wanting Donald Trump dead, but he’s certainly committed to s -
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Blog postThe brave new post-Covid world is beginning to take shape. A couple of days ago I had an e-mail from a friend in Hobart, Tasmania advising me that he had a new e-mail address. He had been teaching at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, so I'd been using his University of Tasmania address. Now he would be teaching at the University of New England, so would I please use the new address? UNE is based in the country town of Tamworth, New South Wales, a mere 1346 kilometres and one ocean crossin
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Blog postIt was Oscar Wilde who wrote to his friend Ada Leverson: 'One must have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell (in Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop) without laughing.' It would take a similar heart of stone to read about Donald Trump's encounter with Covid-19 and not laugh. Decorum requires that we don't do it, of course. But surely a discreet snicker among friends and family is permitted?
There are those—come on, admit it, I’ve heard you—who would like to see Donald Trump
Titles By Peter Grose
