Velar learning, Beijing

People, piddle, puddle or hell,
there's a lot of work in that dark /l/

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Décadence Mandchoue

The memoir of Sir Edmund Trelawney Backhouse, 2nd Bt. (Backhouse /bækˈʌs/, which is appropriate) will be published this week , and a cracking good read it looks, even if it is a load of old cobblers. I wouldn't be so sure though. Reading the review I was reminded of my own time in China; if I published a memoir of life in Guangzhou in the mid-noughties no-one would believe it. I could tell of the divorcée who invited me to move in and offered to sweeten the deal by installing a concubine or two. The girlfriend who came over one night with her 17 year old, uninitiated, eager cousin. The unspeakably depraved practices of Mystic Meg from Hiroshima. T he policewoman who, upon discovering the effects of black resin on the male member, ensured that there was always a ready supply on the bedside table. T he millionaire's daughter who drove me to a nightclu b with one hand on the wheel of the Merc and the other not, at every traffic light her head bobbing down for a quick... As I s
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The Songstone, Canto I: The Tower is published today. A free copy from: Smashwords But Kora sat unmoving, in great magic.  The walls, her home, faded about her. Warmth went; all alone and on a freezing plain, dressed in a tunic, sharp knife in her belt, bow on her shoulder, arrows in a quiver  behind. Her eyes gleamed; a pale cold light, ˈlɪmpɪd ɪn ˈdʌlnəs She looked around. Away, at vision’s limit, a dark shape rose above the plain: a Tower, the only thing in all this barren place: no bird flew, no grass grew. Despite the wool  she shivered. Breath-clouds hung in the raw air, ˈsləʊli dɪˈzɒlvɪŋ Then in eye’s corner something moved. She turned to gaze across the Waste and saw a Cloud. Far, almost straight behind her as she faced the Tower, it too reared up black and sheer. Unlike the Tower, moving, whirling, wisps trailing their tentacles around a core, ˈtwɪstɪŋ ɪnˈseɪnli
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