Whenever a new academic year comes around, that old brew of excitement and nerves begins to creep up on me. I catch myself quietly conjuring up timetables, freshly printed syllabuses, late evenings in the library, coffee-stained notebooks. I find myself secretly, and perhaps rather preposterously, longing for the pains
It is almost time to dust this skeleton costume, load the candy baskets and carve this massive pumpkin into an evil-looking vegetable. Halloween is approaching and you don’t need an American passport to indulge in the day’s festivities anymore. October 31 has spread its wings back to
Everyone has been reading The Odyssey this summer, they say. Even though I haven’t seen anyone carrying it to the beach, I must admit I’ve been one of them. I wasn’t planning on being very vocal about it, let alone write a piece about it. And yet,
It has been ages since I last spent so much time in the water. When I was a kid, we used to pack up our things the day after school was over and move to our house near the sea. We would pack up again for the city just a
It’s the season of renewal and rebirth, they say. Well, spring has come into my life this year with a bang. Change is the theme. It gets me thinking. Birth, rebirth: we have all gone through it. No exception. Most of us have wanted a metaphorical rebirth in one
Few drinks are as closely tied to English identity as tea. However, it wasn't always so. Believe it or not, England was one of the first countries outside the Levant to embrace the coffeehouse and make it its own. The history of the English coffeehouse is so fascinating
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the art of reading is in decline. According to a major new survey by The Reading Agency, only one in two adults in Britain now reads regularly, and over a third have given up entirely. When asked why reading for pleasure has dropped,
A few days ago, I came across an article in The Guardian about Charles Dickens and Christmas. A mighty combination, I admit. The article explored some of Dickens’ inventions that didn’t ‘make the cut’. These, I've learned, include ghosts, stories of failure and goblins. This last one,
The longest night of the year is at our doorstep. As cold seeps in and early morning light becomes a fading memory, I catch myself contemplating the upcoming season. I’m not a winter person. The humdrum of winter does not ring my bells. It’s too long, it’s
Yesterday evening, I jumped on a train to the city of Ghent. It was dark and cold, the full moon shining so brightly against the night sky that it almost felt like a small spotlight guiding me to the university library. A good omen, I told myself rather optimistically, choosing
It’s a typical week in the heart of November. Days are getting shorter and darker. Cold is seeping in. The pitter-pattering of the rain is here to stay. And so are crime stories. Because what’s better than curling up in bed with a good murder mystery after
I was racking my brain for an interesting topic related to Halloween when the idea of divination came to mind. Fortune-telling has long been a part of Halloween traditions, and I immediately thought of tarot cards. Yet, as I started researching, I realized there was no mention of tarot