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2 weeks ago | 
matthewclapham.medium.com | Matthew Clapham
Member-only storyA story of untold meanings. And no, there isn’t an apostrophe missing there. Matthew Clapham·Follow12 min read·--Easy, tiger! I mean, ‘lion’. (Photo by Guy Roberts on Unsplash)[Introductory note: this started out as a short story meant for a literary magazine specialising in ethical and philosophical pieces, and was intended as a fairly serious work about Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language.
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3 weeks ago | 
matthewclapham.medium.com | Matthew Clapham
Member-only storyA silly, sorry, savoury story of freshly sliced historyMatthew Clapham·Follow8 min read·--Pop quiz, hotshots: What was this surfing paradise once named? (Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash)I’m used to it, of course. I’ve been maligned all my life. Put upon. Ridiculed. ‘Humiliated’ would not, I fear, be an exaggeration. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, sniggering to yourselves.
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2 months ago | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
Are we too blind, or proud, to pick up on others’ great and practical ideas? Matthew Clapham·FollowPublished inIberospherical·5 min read·--Photo by Umanoide on UnsplashMy first trip abroad changed the course of my life. That family holiday in France inspired a love of languages, a fascination with sardines that didn’t come out of can, and a desire to live under sunny skies amid happy people. It also brought me face to face with something else we didn’t have in 1980s Britain: the salad spinner.
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2 months ago | 
matthewclapham.medium.com | Matthew Clapham
God’s honest truthMatthew Clapham·Follow3 min read·--Fort Knox (Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash)Look, I’m a businessman. Probably the greatest businessman that ever lived. Better even than those money-changers in the bible and stuff, and they were God’s businessmen, right? So that makes me technically better than God. By the way, does anyone want to buy a bible? I’ve got a bunch of them here. Real fancy gold cover. Anyway, I know about prices — supply and demand, all that crap.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
MOVING TO SPAINA handy list of alternatives to the overfamiliar (and expensive) Barcelona and MadridMatthew Clapham·FollowPublished inIberospherical·5 min read·--The straight and winding road to Alicante (Photo credit: Kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)Winter is coming — climatically and/or politically — to the Northern Hemisphere.
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Dec 9, 2024 | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
HE’S LEAVING HOMEThe childhood holiday that steered my destiny overseasMatthew Clapham·FollowPublished inThe Peregrine Journal·4 min read·--Look into the flames and see your future (Photo by Danny de Jong on Unsplash)It was over twenty years ago that I settled in Spain, more than thirty since I last lived permanently in the land of my birth. But the odyssey that brought me to these foreign shores began one summer holiday fully forty years back. I remember as if it were yesterday.
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Dec 8, 2024 | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
ALGAE RHYTHM, WRITTEN IN SEAWEED++Which flopped and which did not after a year and a half on Medium? Matthew Clapham·FollowPublished inAll About M·4 min read·--Weighed in the scales and found wanting (Auckland Museum, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)This may well, you will doubtless be pleased to hear, be my last gripe about Medium. So I will keep it short and bitter. When I started out here, back in May 2023, I had few expectations.
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Dec 6, 2024 | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!A tale of corporate intrigue and mass deceptionMatthew Clapham·FollowPublished inDoctor Funny·2 min read·--The Medium Help Desk, fully staffed and working at max capacity (Raysonho @ Open Grid Scheduler / Grid Engine, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)The scene: Medium Help Desk office. You can tell it’s the Help Desk because there’s a sign on the wall that says ‘Help Desk’.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
CULTUREI’m an Englishman in new shoes, that now fit like old slippers. Have I gone native? Matthew Clapham·FollowPublished inA-Culturated·5 min read·--“Tea, coffee, or me?” (Photo by Jacqueline O'Gara on Unsplash)I’m sitting under a palm tree on San Luis beach in Cumaná, Venezuela, gazing out over the Caribbean Sea as I clutch a cool bottle of Polar beer. I take a sip. “Ah, life doesn’t get much better than this!”My colleague Enrique nods, and takes a swig from his bottle. “Bwah!” he spits out.
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Dec 4, 2024 | 
medium.com | Matthew Clapham
But fear that climate change may mean I have to forsake it foreverMatthew Clapham·FollowPublished inThe Peregrine Journal·5 min read·--The lower you go, the greener it gets (Photo credit: La Nucia Ayuntamiento, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)My native England may not be quite as wet as neighbouring Wales, or the Emerald Isle just across the Irish Sea, but certainly seemed to get as much rain as I would need for a lifetime in my first two decades growing up there. Any season, any time.
