The Sigla Blog

Anyone passing through here with even a modicum of regularity has probably noticed the blog equivalent of a tumbleweed passing through. I’ve been working a hell of a lot in the last month and a couple of things I’ve been doing are food-related. I used to bake a huge amount as a child. No weekend […]

In today’s Observer woman magazine Louise France uses an interview with Periel Aschenbrand as a springboard to a debate on the future of feminism. Aschenbrand is more agit-prop sloganeer than academic feminist and uses fashion, popular culture and her own body as a vehicle for her ideas. Most famous for her ‘The only bush […]

It’s almost a year to the day since I lamented the closing of the Winding Stair, a wonderful café/book shop hybrid that is much missed. In the April edition of Food and Wine Magazine, there is heartening news. Apparently The Thomas Read Group have bought the venue and plan to re-open it as a ‘gastro-library’. […]

Every year The Cúirt International Festival of Literature seems to the raise the bar with its programme, not to mention the odd coupling of certain writers for discussions. This year, its 21st, there’s a wonderful array of visual art, film, music, theatre and lectures to take in, but it’s the literature aspect of the […]

This post has two purposes, some observations and and many brief recommendations:

- It plugs the ever-widening guilty hole in my conscience for not blogging (ah yes, more 12 hour days this week). It’s after 8pm and I reckon I’ve another three hours of stuff to finish. When you’ve been writing work stuff for 12 hours […]

There’s something simultaneously fascinating and horrifying about spats between people in the public eye. It is car crash narrative, the editorial of ambulance chasing. While feuding stars are fodder for pulp mags like Heat, Now et al, the broadsheets are not averse to covering them, depending on who is saying what and to whom. […]