Keiron Pim

Yes! It had never occurred to me but now you mention it…

Bonniest of voyages — I’ll be thinking of you and hoping all goes well, K x

This was great fun to do. My Writer’s Bookshelf, spanning from Sherwood Anderson to Sue Townsend, via Joseph Roth, the Usborne Guide to the Supernatural World, Peanuts, Toni Morrison and many others… Many thanks to @mathewlyons.bsky.social for asking me!

Somehow this had passed me by… that’s the rest of my evening sorted! Cheers Andy.

Loose Salute, by Michael Nesmith and the First National Band (1970)

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook

Chuffed to pick these up this afternoon and get change from a fiver! The Another Planet record shop in Cromer is always good for a bargain.

I have sometimes been entertained by him but have never trusted him. I know which matters more in an interviewer — and indeed in a political commentator, which he now appears to see himself as.

Yes, sure you’re right. Plus there’s the tension between producing literature & living in an era of immediate, ever-flowing online discourse. The urgency to publish can feel overwhelming. Easy to fear the world will have moved on by the time we’re ready to speak! Although alas a/s is always topical…

Quite — I mean, the anti-Israel demonstrations began on October 8th, so we were forcibly encouraged to “move on” even as we were still reeling in trauma. I’m writing about all this too, but alas it won’t be published for another couple of years!

Thanks for explaining. I’d say that such extreme voices have felt so pervasive since 7/10 — in part because they’re largely unopposed by more moderate voices — that living in this hostile climate feels untenable for many Jews. Hence the “half-madness”. But I’ll read the book and see what I think.

Good to read this: I suspect many critics will focus on the subject, not the book itself. I’d be interested to see you substantiate the claim of sophistry on Jacobson’s part, beyond the brief mention of “ridiculous Trumpy rants” about campus antisemitism. Are you able to expand on that, please?

The third para here is also evidence of this.

Ah, great! Thanks for letting me know.

Is that Monie Love as well? Looks quite like her but I can’t be sure.

I almost posted “Israel is a US client state entirely propped up by American military funding without which it would cease to exist while also being the all powerful mastermind pulling all the strings in the US government which it controls completely” but I realized some of you really believe that

YouTube video by Dr. Nuno C. Sousa, Psychoanalyst The Cramps at the California State Mental Hospital in Napa - Concert 1978

If through some inexplicable lack of curiosity you have never seen the 20-minute video tape of the Cramps playing live to the inmates of the Napa State Mental Hospital, and you need something to restore your faith in humanity, press play on this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jnk...

I’ve got a bit about this in my next book. The line is something like “I was packed off to a group CBT course where I left every weekly session with a pile of homework when I barely had the wherewithal to do my day job”. The absolute opposite of what I needed at the time!

From Hamas attack to U.S. war with Iran, violence forges a new Middle East An Iran-led order that long backed the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – is gone. What will follow is one of the top questions of modern geopolitics.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar launched the Oct. 7 attack on Israel to transform the Middle East.

It did, on a scale comparable to the carving up of the Ottoman Empire a century ago — but not remotely in the ways Sinwar had in mind

The great Steve Hendrix reports from Jerusalem

wapo.st/3N6j0yl

For the accomplishment of their divinely appointed mission, I believe. It’s an utter nightmare playing out in reality before our eyes.

In a time of daily horrors, this is truly one of the most chilling things I’ve seen in a long while.

There’s a relish in maximising death and terror here that would befit a comic book villain. But no, this is the US Secretary of Defense.

YouTube video by Lund Peterson Lou Reed Guess I'm Falling in love live

velvet underground researchers have apparently confirmed that this audio from a random youtube user is genuinely the long-lost july '67 performance from upbeat, a cleveland teen tv show, doing the unreleased "guess i'm falling in love" complete with screaming girls. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU2U...

The cover of the 1958 Random House, New York edition of THE MAGIC BARREL by Bernard Malamud.

Hospital waiting room reading (or rather rereading, but it’s so long since I read it…)

Crocuses out at Blickling, North Norfolk

A drink at the Buckinghamshire Arms in Blickling, North Norfolk

Blickling Hall, North Norfolk

My last outing before an operation tomorrow that will leave me housebound for a couple of weeks — a wander around Blickling, sunshine, crocuses and Guinness Zero in a beer garden… heaven!

A copy of David Quantick’s excellent book on the Beatles’ White Album, which I actually have no intention of selling.

*heads straight to eBay and starts daydreaming about how to spend my newfound wealth*

Thank you, Lee! Lovely to hear from you.

Thanks, Mathew! This reminds me, I need to email you — will do so this afternoon.

Crocuses out at Blickling, North Norfolk

A drink at the Buckinghamshire Arms in Blickling, North Norfolk

Blickling Hall, North Norfolk

My last outing before an operation tomorrow that will leave me housebound for a couple of weeks — a wander around Blickling, sunshine, crocuses and Guinness Zero in a beer garden… heaven!

Russia soldiers tell BBC they saw fellow troops in Ukraine war executed on commanders' orders Four men expose the horror and brutality of conditions in the Ukraine war, with two saying they saw soldiers being shot for refusing orders.

Utterly grim reading but a valuable illustration of life in the Russian army four years into the war.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

7" of Ken Parker - My Whole World Is Falling Down on Bamboo label. Released in 1969. Produced by Coxsone Dodd.

Remembering the late, great Ken Parker who was born on this day in 1948.

Few in Jamaican music had a voice as pure as Ken's. On this 1969 Studio 1 recording he turns a William Bell Stax tune into a reggae classic...

youtu.be/vNtJjdg9wG8?...

#reggae #reggaesky #vinylsky #vinyl #musicsky

Yes, this is well documented! Lots of articles online about Einstein’s time living in a hut on Roughton Heath. About 20 years ago I helped put up a blue plaque commemorating it on a nearby pub, but I’ve heard that it’s recently been removed.