Alison Gibbs

ultimately you cannot appease people whose purpose in life is to destroy you bsky.app/profile/drje...

the right winger who was appointed to lead the BBC in the hope of appeasing right wingers has been driven out by right wingers for not appeasing right wingers enough and the BBC has the chance to do the funniest thing ever

I could have stared at it forever.

No, YOU’RE reading that to the tune of Forrest’s “Rock the Boat”.

The reason I’ve found the Louvre situation so bizarre is that I’ve seen French security up close - we visited Ile de la Cite just as the trials for the terrorist attacks were starting. (Not on purpose, obvs). The security cordons to walk anywhere round the area were immense.

I obviously still know my childhood phone number, but the other one that stuck with me was my desk phone from the job I had in 2002-07. I get a weird urge to call it and see if it’s still 28 year old me on the other end, trying to buy banner ads on Yahoo.

Another of those days where I silently fume at my nemesis. Do I live rent free in her head or is she in mine?

Calling English a 'rip-off degree' is one of the most blatant exhibitions of personal barbarism I've ever seen. You've demonstrated nothing but the poverty of your own mind.

I cannot understand what these people think the purpose of human life is?

It is *not* "pursue joy, deal justly, love well, try to understand as much and see as much of this beautiful world and of the deepness, richness and variety of human culture and experience as you can before you die"?

Illustration of the precinct shopping centre in Coventry, with its shiny 1960s architecture, walkways and colourful flower planters

“An example of the town of the future is Coventry.... Traffic and pedestrians are kept apart and the roads are planned to let traffic flow smoothly”

(Our Land in the Making, 1966)
Artist: Ronald Lampitt

I really hope this doesn’t catch on, in general, but also this particular example - living in a place called Norwood, the name is going to play havoc with the algorithm. I don’t want a load of AI nonsense to come up whenever I search for Norwood.

I remember the double standard of the ‘rule of 4’ being different in England/Wales & Scotland: Scotland didn’t include young children in the ‘4’, so in Scotland I could have met a friend with her 2 kids and my 2 outdoors, in England I couldn’t. It just seemed so unfair.

I feel like I read Great Expectations too young - I found it a struggle at the time - but Bleak House’s plot really is a tangled web. The other (Dickens adjacent) book I definitely read too young was the Moonstone: re-reading once more familiar with detective fiction as a genre, I tore through it!

I saw this come up again on Facebook today and re-read that opening paragraph. I feel like I understand the context much better than when I first read it - having the Crystal Palace dinosaurs in the neighbourhood helps - but there’s no doubt it’s the Dickens I found most challenging to read.

It is possible to cherish the BBC as an institution while also saying that BBC News is failing very badly, day after day, in its duty to inform and that it always fails in a right-wing direction. It desperately needs to recover its integrity

From 30 Rock: Tracy Jordan: I finally understand the ending of The Sixth Sense. The names are the people worked on the movie!

This was a great joke.

Watching Nosferatu in the hope of being pleasantly scared in a minor key, but it’s just pure ham. What a shame…

57 things I love in London because London is so good. it's just so so good.

I have dealt with my BIG FEELINGS about people saying mean things about London by writing this about 57 things I love in London. There were 100 things I loved, but it got too long for one email. London is inexhaustible.

naomialderman.substack.com/p/57-things-...

I can add so many things - the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, Tooting lido (I’d choose it over Brockwell), the view from Streatham Common (Van Gogh loved it too), the Ikea towers of Croydon, Battersea Park & its zoo, John Soane’s museum, the Inns of Court, Bloomsbury, the Barbican, the wobbly bridge…

It’s my favourite no filler album. No track I’d skip, except Waking the Witch, because to this day I still find it too scary to listen to. But I’d add in Under the Ivy, which is glorious.

Our daughter’s school suffered a fire in the holidays and we are fundraising to buy books and resources for the temporary site they are moving to. Anyone who is able to donate - thank you!

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/juliansptfa

Penguin's 2010 reissue of Lolita

Fifteen years ago, Jon noticed that Penguin's new Modern Classic edition of Nabokov's Lolita had stripped out the foreword by "John Ray, Jr." - who needs this yawnsome old intro! - ...which is actually part of the novel. A contact at Penguin told me the following Monday morning was not a jolly one.

I can

I can

This is just the saddest news. A really good man and a really good bookseller.

Bookseller Crow shop window

Shocked beyond belief to hear (via the shop’s IG account) of the death of Jonathan Main, the stalwart of Bookseller Crow in Crystal Palace.

I only met Jon once but we chatted online for years and he was so very funny, interesting, and knowledgable (with apt cynicism) about the book world. RIP Jon.

I don’t think most other people sneeze quite as violently as our family seem to do. We would carry all before us.

No mention of the Wales Scotland match on your rugby page? Shame! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

UK smog alert: vulnerable people advised to stay indoors Warning comes as air pollution is expected to reach eight or nine on a 10-point scale in much of southern UK

It was April 2014 in fact: www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014... - I can remember the prickling, choking feeling from it at the back of my throat.

I can remember one of the really bad smogs - Feb or March 2014 - I had a terrible hacking cough and I stood in Brockwell Park to see the view and London was completely lost in a haze of pollution. It’s definitely improved since then.