1. Miss Lemon from the hit TV show Poirot was played by actress Pauline Moran. From 1965-70 Moran was the bassist in all-female rock band She Trinity.

2. I was goosed today in a pub. By a dog.

3. Fledgling herring gulls are fearless, inquisitive and loud.

4. Daytime TV reminds you that certain sitcoms were indeed masterful. The Rodney-Cassandra wedding episode of Only Fools & Horses, where Del Boy is left alone at the end, was impactful, emotionally economical, more insightful than 3mnths of narrative arc in a typical soap.

5. Hugh Fraser, who played Captain Hastings in Poirot, is an amiable cove on Twitter. He writes novels these days.

6. The experimental music programme Late Junction on R3, hosted by Verity Sharp, is ideal for schlepping back up the M90/A90/A947 late doors.

7. Recent Flaming Lips videos have been remarkable (Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds feat. Miley Cyrus; Almost Home).

8. Only R3 could have a breakfast DJ called Petroc Trelawney.

9. Wrecking Ball, for all its faux-controversy, is a fine pop song.

10. The Proms get a bad rep for their appalling nationalist finale. The programme however is kicking.

I read a tweet today, a link to a Guardian article by Jonathan Freedland, that was titled, ‘With each misstep, Jeremy Corbyn is handing Britain to the Tories.’ I think it’s a bit late for that since the significant changes during my lifetime – the decline of manufacturing, the rise of service industries, the pre-eminence of financial services, the fall in trade union membership, the sell-off of public assets, the rise, then fall in home ownership, the internet, globalisation, Islamism, China, the fall of the Berlin Wall and more – have effectively created a different environment that Westminster and the London media have yet to catch up with. They’re still playing Pong with the Conservative and Labour parties as the bats. At the moment, the Tories are the single biggest party still standing, obviously, but they don’t have a huge majority and there are significant internal splits over Europe. Depending on how the Euro referendum goes, UKIP will start to look more and more attractive to a good number of anti-European Conservatives. (UKIP should be also taken seriously, as a blog by SNP strategist Gordon Guthrie argues; they’re not just a bunch of clowns – see link below). Meanwhile, back » Continue Reading.

Vintage Magazine Shop, Brewer St, Soho. The Word, a 2006 edition – ? – with Johnny Cash in the cover, yours for £10.00.

Not looked in for a while but did yesterday and noticed a post by DougieJ about the Afterword being a busted flush. Well, since I’m hardly here these days, it’s not down to me to comment – but it did occur to post a thing about why I’m not around anymore (it’s not you, it’s me babes). At the end of September last year I moved to London, to live with my girlfriend and her two kids. I was also insanely lucky on the work front, walking into six months of freelancing that eventually turned into ten months – that engagement only drew to a close a fortnight last Friday. Since October last year therefore, I have been living what we would popularly define as ‘a normal life’: up at 7am, Northern line into central London, slaving away at a hot flatscreen all day, tube home by 7pm-ish, commitments with my girlfriend’s family at weekends and holidays, schlepping most of the length of this island every second month to see my 80-year-old dad who lives in small town on the Moray Firth (while I live south of the Thames). In the four years before that, summer 2010 to summer 2014, » Continue Reading.