Swithun

PLS NO I just had a cold in Dec/Jan I deeply resist this sore throat and sudden stuffy nose if I am too ill for Duckie on Saturday I shall thcweam and thcweam and thcweam until I'm thick

She's comin' up man sized

How many more press photos of Mahmood looking like she's just been cast in a gender-flipped version of The Demon Headmaster must we be subjected to?!

Berlin, baby! And before you ask, yes I *did* buy tickets for London, Manchester and Paris while I worked out what to do!

After literal months of anxiety, I've sorted the most important part of my year: deciding which B-52s concert I can go to without disrupting my friend's 40th birthday OR missing the fifth meeting of the Proust book group.

Fun (?) Fact! In English we typically stress the second syllable of a verb, but the first syllable of a noun or adjective. (Fre-QUENT / FRE-quent.) See also rebel, conduct, present, etc.

We knew the gig was up in Bermondsey when the CostCutter started stocking competing brands of oat milk

Also you can read it in an afternoon, like all the best Spark novels

Last time I saw The Devils, I knew there were other gays in the audience because, when Oliver Reed floated naked off the cross and Vanessa Redgrave lustily licked his stigmata, someone in the row behind me whispered, "Work."

No sweetheart. Ask him for a drink or I'll doxx you 😘

You're saying that because you've only ever had them from a tin ☺️

They're probably quietly sponsored by Bold Beans - and I'm sorry to say it, but... have you bought their queen chickpeas in a jar?! Game changer.

I firmly believe this was the influence for the dream song!

Dreamed I was in an old person's home performing an acoustic country song called 'Stumblin' Home to Jesus', and that my partner was mistaken for a resident because he had "old hair"

This is paywalled so I remain in the dark about what JezCoopz is doing - but want to say I love how mundane his novels are in detail and vocabulary, but how unique his sentences are. It feels like he understands how physically restrained, yet potentially spiritually expansive, a human life is.

I don't understand even half of this book and I think that's just how it should be

I mean it's possible he's just beginning to eat her

How much should I know about my therapist's haemorrhoids? If the answer is "nothing whatsoever" I'm afraid we passed that point some years ago

YouTube video by MikeyRemembers Tribe 8 - Lezbophobia

Me to Marcel at the end of Vol 4:

Is this what finishing the last volume of Proust will feel like

The weather has shifted - even if just for one day - and my soul tells me it is time to re-read The Interior Castle. Many mansions, bébé: hope one of them has a sunroom.

The OUP translation is The Ladies' Paradise. It's great fun. There's an insane scene towards the end when the store becomes a consumer-critique version of the Bacchae.

I'd better order a few hundred thousand copies, to help him earn out that advance

When I was at university in the mid-2000s, one of my tutors repeatedly referenced this novel as some flimflam nadir of postmodernism, but would never give me the title or author. And now at last I know! Scrolling on social media isn't a waste of time after all!

(Yes I know it happens when you change the barrel. But all the same.)

A young barmaid ruins her career live on camera as she produces a pint's worth of froth on a Birra Moretti

This poor girl having it documented by the FT that she poured an entire pint of foam, in a video her billionaire boss will probably watch. Workplace bullying!

The front cover of 'Monsieur Proust', and book by Céleste Albaret, published by NYRB.

I am going to spend half the evening laughing about how he gave his maid, Céleste, a walk-on part, which finishes with a line about how she'll never read nor write a book. Well bitch guess what!

Well this was an experience. I read 100 pages in a few days, got sick for a MONTH, then picked it up again in late January. Just finished it over the weekend. My favourite volume so far! Looking forward to being annoying about it at the @kirkdalebooks.bsky.social Proust salon on Friday.

Now picturing net curtains on all the Faber office windows, and their seating replaced by multiple brown corduroy three piece suites

Tbh this is also how I learned she even knows about Jive Bunny. And, I guess, the superbowl?