Ben D

RIP lovely Jilly Cooper, the only subject of a @backlisted.bsky.social episode to write us all thank you letters afterwards. ❤️

Did you get a Wes Anderson vibe from del Toro? The hatch closing over his head and the rug rolling neatly back into place. Felt like a nod.

I think it might be Caryl Phillips's year.

What's your Watford origin story? And do you ever run up to kick a can in the street going 'here's Hogg...DEENEYYYYYYY!'

Seeing it tonight but hope there's a bit in it where his mum is wagging her finger at him going "It's always the same with you, isn't it? It's just one battle after another!"

The plight of the cinemagoer in summer. You turn up in shorts and a tshirt and they crank the AC. Chilly. You turn up in trousers and a jumper expecting them to crank it but they don't. Or they do and you're still too chilly.

Gorillaz doing their s/t debut in full last night at the Copper Box. An album that now sounds both retro and futuristic at the same time. Kid Koala on the decks, 3 turntables. Backing singers. 2 drummers/percussionists. Y2K anxiety. Media saturation. Surveillance. Loneliness. Depression.

Anne Carson, Nox

Zoe not well at the moment so we requested two in advance 🤕

Jackie-O Motherfucker, Cafe Oto

Beckenham Place parkrun this morning.

You think there are no more original ideas and then Thomas Morris goes and writes a short story about Welsh seahorses.

Theatre building looking nice!

Southall parkrun this morning. Small group of runners. Lovely volunteers. Good community vibe. Got to use the Elizabeth line. Dual language sign with Punjabi. Sunflowers on the walk back. Disused Sugar Puffs factory line running parallel?!

Light blue and off white hardback Penguin Classics edition of John Le Carre's The Honourable Schoolboy

Can anyone help me source a second hand copy of this edition of John Le Carre's The Honourable Schoolboy? Nonexistent at a reasonable price and I need it to look nice with the other ones on my shelf 😔

Thank you for confirming. RV was one of my lecturers at university. His Maigret intros show there's a lot more going on in those novels under the surface! Specific dates and times resonating with historical moments etc. Don't have those editions myself but luckily his intros are online.

Am I right in thinking some of those early 00s ones have introductions? Including a very brilliant and insightful one by Richard Vinen?

The History of Bad Ideas: Austerity 194

Had a great chat with David Runciman on his new podcast on bad ideas. Revisiting Austerity with all the new updates: www.ppfideas.com/episodes/the...

Nish Kumar at Hackney Empire yesterday (afternoon show). Enjoyed the set but he didn't mention Starmer once and in terms of UK politics stuck mainly to Sunak and Johnson. Think people just want that stuff behind them now. Material needs updating.

Curzon one now looks like a functional minimalist masterpiece by comparison

Yep, can't find booked tickets either.

Picturehouse Cienmas have ruined their UI on the app with the worst update of all time and I don't understand why they've done it and they will probably never roll it back and it makes me sad. It's unusable now.

Here comes the new Fosse, same as the old Fosse

I've become addicted to/dependent on the 'chilled jazz' playlist on Spotify. Slow realisation that the chords often resolve in the same way and it's all, or almost all, AI generated. But it helps me focus when reading and keeps the tinnitus at bay.

Nearly done with Flesh by David Szalay. Thank you @iammilliam.bsky.social for the rec. You don't come across ones like these very often.

Unfortunately you just missed Passover

Edna O’Brien smoking a cigarette on the film poster for the documentary.

Thought this was very good. Didn't know she (therapeutically) dropped acid with RD Laing. Remarkable how she looked and sounded different in every interview they showed. Need to read her 'IRA novel'.

I've got an idea for a fight scene in a spy film. Spy has been assigned seat next to target on a train and they end up fighting, but the whole fight is sitting down next to each other. So just with hands? I feel like this would be a novel fight scene but has it ever been done before?

Do you have any tips for tackling it? If I did 10 pages a day I think it'd take 4.5 months!

I'm missing my grandma's birthday party tomorrow but in my defence, it's Chantal Akerman's lesser known documentary d'est, I've missed the rest of the screenings in the run, it's at Cine Lumiere, my family totally gets it