Category Archives: Personal experience

Charles

Posted on 09/04/2020 by alasdairflett

Charles was the first to move in at Hermit’s Croft student accommodation that fateful Saturday in September. His buzz cut look and austere apparel was not the combination of flowing locks and trim overcoats I would become used to over … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience, Tribute | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mid-March Musings

Posted on 15/03/2020 by alasdairflett

I am now a qualified lifeguard. Well, more accurately, I have a lifeguard qualification. I am not currently “practising” as a lifeguard, not yet being paid to guard life as it were. In my last post, I used the term … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Toot-toot-toot! Lifeguard going in!

Posted on 20/02/2020 by alasdairflett

The year 2020 is in and I am reaching the end of my twenty third on this planet. Will Taylor Swift ever speak to me in the same way? I think at this stage I should firmly be considered an … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

2019 in retrospect

Posted on 01/01/2020 by alasdairflett

In January work began in earnest on my German dissertation. I was comparing the 1950s poetry of two of East Germany’s leading literary figures: Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller. The latter had been charged with unoriginality in contemporary criticism of … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1979

Posted on 25/08/2019 by alasdairflett

I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. […] The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brilliant yellow tinged with melancholy

Posted on 19/05/2019 by alasdairflett

University: complete. The opening of a new chapter, as they say. Of course, there are conditionals. A possible return is not ruled out in the long term, but for now postgraduate study is not in the immediate pipeline. What is … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Burger flippin’

Posted on 28/08/2018 by alasdairflett

You find me at the end of a month in the role of grillmaster at Eusa’s Gilded Garden burger outlet. After an unshaven dressinggowned week or so with a short intermission in Stirling for my brother’s brass band course concert … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Blog zum Semesterende

Posted on 28/08/2018 by alasdairflett

Do you know when an interior seems to suggest a certain lifestyle? Well here it’s in full effect and by here I mean this interim address post-student halls in Leipzig. I’ve found myself drinking herbal tea, reading niche German books … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MTV Cribs: Goethe

Posted on 10/06/2018 by alasdairflett

The extent to which I’ve read into Goethe’s oeuvre is really quite limited. I’ve covered about as much as an average German school pupil can be expected to in the course of their education; the early poems – Prometheus, Willkommen … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Erfurt excursion – Berlin briefly – Leipzig living

Posted on 27/04/2018 by alasdairflett

I began writing this in transit on the way to the capital having missed the Flixbus and worked up quite a sweat in the process at the tail end of a week of consistently 20-degree weather. The switch to Deutsche … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Personal experience | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment