Marakesh II: Esauria January 18, 2019 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment Having done no research, we booked two trips in Marrakesh with our agent, one to the mountains, the second to Esauria (round about 65€ each). I had asked for the blue city, which is near Casablanca but was offered a three-hour drive to Essaouiria instead (an almost blue city). The trip to the mountains was… Read More
Mah, ah kreshed I! January 5, 2019 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment Salam Aleikum from a freezing Marrakech. This was supposed to be an educational blog about the vicissitudes of teaching English in the Spanish State system, but as they say, I´ll save that till later when I have more evidence-based content, however what I have gleaned so far: • Our (CEIP) students are natively bi-lingual as… Read More
The Rhythm is going to get you; sounds of Englishness September 30, 2018 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment I was in a Zumba class the other day, hopelessly mincing about at the back, as the ghetto-blaster pumped out the dirge that is mambo no 5 by a certain Lou Bega. Not only is this beat not Mambo, but also I found myself consistently always behind the instructor’s steps. I was not particularly caught… Read More
Rule Britannico ; Police & Thieves, hablais Spanglish ? May 29, 2018 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment Language I’ve been trying to learn a new language, (Castillian) Spanish, & have come across some fairly interesting stuff which you probably won’t find in the text books (but is out on the internet). So this follows on from my series about Good Writing but examines at the more atomic level of language, and how… Read More
Fat chance ; Buscando Umami a primer! October 20, 2017 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment Following my mother’s heart attack I have had to take diet very seriously and indeed this piece comes after four month’s research which culminated in a Japan Foundation “ Is Japanese food healthy ?” talk by Prof.Ole Mouritsen. A few month’s ago I found out that UK Afro-Caribbeans and Sub-Continental Asians are twice as prone… Read More
Fawlty Towers, a Bonfire of inequalities-Awn writin, a Primer III . August 16, 2017 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment This wasn’t supposed to be a trilogy, but hey, as Al Pacino said (GFII) jus wen ya tink ur out, dey just keep dun drawing yo back in (notwithstanding there might be an epilogue). In my first article I outlined some benchmarks for good writing. In the second I applied them to Neuro Scientist Daniel… Read More
Awn writing a primer II : Statistics & lies (TMI) ! June 7, 2017 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment We undoubtedly live in the information era, where we have 24 hr rolling news and can Google any topic in a matter of milliseconds, but how accurate is this information and indeed can we use it in a significant way? Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin tries to address these themes in “A field Guide to lies &… Read More
Awn writing, a primer! December 24, 2016 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment Writing comes in many forms, from technical papers to nursery rhymes. Each of these genres come with their own protocols & vocabularies, but one can often distinguish whether something is well written, in the same way we can recognise a well composed piece of music, photo, or beautiful painting. A good piece of Writing, takes… Read More
The Greatest Marketeer; Madmen & the Catcher in the Rye November 17, 2016 | rudebuoy | Leave a comment Read More
My Father Luis Santamaria and Swansea kindness by Belinda Santamaria October 28, 2016 | malcolm wickens | 1 Comment My father (Luis) was a child war refugee. Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini had beguiled the world of their innocence, while the reality was the suffering of my father and other children. Four thousand Basque children had arrived in Britain from Spain in 1937, leaving behind the atrocities of a civil war. In 1938, they were… Read More