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  1. I’ve not posted here for a good long while, so I have included a round up from the past few months

    Read
    American Dirt – Jeanine Cummings
    This has been sitting on my Kindle for years, but I finally read it whilst suffering / recovering from a nasty cold. A mother and her young son flee across Mexico whilst pursued by a vengeful cartel boss. It’s a propulsive narrative, that hurtles along much like the trains they use to plot their escape. But. It wasn’t until I finished it that I read some of the reviews. This book picked up a huge amount of criticism. With the author accused of appropriation, being inauthentic and presenting herself as a white saviour.

    Our Evenings – Alan Hollinghurst
    The death of a mentor / guardian sends the narrator into a reverie as he remembers a life spent on the edges of a society, class and country in which he can never be wholly accepted whether through the nature of his sexuality, race or class. Beautiful, sensual prose that reminded me of Iris Murdoch as opposed to Henry James whom Hollinghurst is so often compared to.

    The Dog Stars – Pete Heller
    Since I read The Stand way back when I have always enjoyed an apocalyptic story. Maybe enjoyed is the wrong word. Perhaps it would be more truthful to say I’ve a morbid fascination with such tales.
    In Dog Stars, we are thrown into a world where the population has suffered the double whammy of a pandemic followed by an autoimmune blood disease. Some years later we join Hig, a sort of poet / pilot who eeks out survival with his trusty hound and a survivalist whose dim view of humanity is ideally suited for the world in which he now finds himself. It’s a great book, lyrical and thoughtful but also exciting and scary. It’s been made into a film which is released this summer.

    Seen
    Small Prophets
    A binge watch whilst full of cold. Probably stuck in a woozy, wheezy state was the ideal way to experience this. A mix of the quotidian and the fantastical. It deals with loss and friendship, is achingly sad whilst also deeply empathetic. And in their stop motion glory, the Prophets themselves are intriguing and unnerving.

    Malcolm in the middle
    I watched this show when it first hit the small screen in the early 2000s. I always found it like a live action Simpsons. The 4 new episodes were well judged. All bar one of the family returned. I suppose the biggest surprise was less the people who had walked away from acting but rather the return of Bryan Cranston, who stepped from lovable Hal to sociopathic Walter White, establishing himself as one of the finest actors around. He must love the character.
    The final episode was touching, with lots of characters appearing at an anniversary party for Lois and Hal. Hopefully a new series will be commissioned as it’s still fun to spend time with them all.

    Apex
    Sort of Cliffhanger meets Wolf Creek as Charlize Theron is chased through the Australian outback by a deranged local. Bit of a shame this was dumped on Netflix as would look good on the big screen

    Legends
    The war against drugs as fought by a handful of civil servants with little training. It fair rattles along, helped by some decent performances, tight action scenes and judicious needle drops.

    The Boroughs
    Sci fi mystery set in a retirement home. Naturally it is daft as a brush, but it’s nice to spend time with fine actors like Alfred Molina and Geena Davis. As an aside, I watched this thinking how nice American retirement homes seem to be (see also Inside Man, starring Ted Danson).

    Paul
    Nick Frost / Simon Pegg’s good natured love letter to alien encounter movies rematerialized on Netflix for a bit. Always fun to watch, and to spot the lines lifted from Aliens, Star Wars and all things Spielberg.

    Disclosure Day
    Talking of Spielberg, saw his new movie at the pictures. Aliens, car chases, Colin Firth acting utterly furious from behind a clenched jaw. Amongst the mayhem, themes of faith and empathy play out. Good stuff, whilst not being especially memorable. Must admit I was somewhat distracted during the film as one of the characters is played by a chap called Henry Lloyd-Hughes. I knew I recognized him and afterwards discovered that he had previously played Donovan, the school bully in the Inbetweeners. Feels like quite the jump – so fair play to the bloke.

    Heard
    Alpinestars – Burning Up.
    Missed this single when it first came out in the early 2000s, but I can’t get enough of it. Bit New Order, bit Elbow.

    Morcheeba – Big Calm
    I especially like the opening track ‘The Sea’

    Kanye West – Runaway
    Never really listened to the man’s music before. But heard this in a bar and I find it a bit of an earworm.

    • I thought Disclosure Day was truly appalling. I thought it was going to be a realistic exploration of how humanity coped with the knowledge of alien existence. Instead, we got a ridiculous plot involving an alien remote control type of device that allowed humans to exert mind control over other humans. The first time the baddies almost caught Josh O’Connor but he managed to escape them I found so banal and clichéd. When the same thing happened a second time, I lost the will to live.

          • Yep – I had fun watching it. Can’t say I remember a whole lot about it, although the car/train sequence has stuck. Also, the idea that empathy is humanity’s superpower is sincere, if a bit hokey.

            Forgot to say I also went to see the Backrooms. Now that is an original movie – an unsettling flick with echoes of Lynch & Don’t hug me I’m scared. Plus the creepy Backrooms themselves were eerily reminiscent of offices and shops I worked in or visited during the 80s and 90s.

            • I liked Backrooms (though I thought the first half better than the second). I like that the young YouTuber who had a cult following with his Backrooms videos got to direct it and it made millions.

    • Loved the Malcolm In The Middle reboot. A fitting addendum to one of the funniest and most warm hearted sitcoms ever made. Hope they give us a little more of it.

      At the other end of the spectrum, I read my first Hollinghurst earlier in the year and was completely smitten with his prose. There are novels you read and sort of vaguely feel that on your best day you might have been able to come up with something faintly as good, and then there’s stuff like this, where you just have to put the book down and wonder how the hell there are people living amongst us who are capable of conjuring such magic. Hollinghurst very much in the latter camp, it would seem.

  2. It’s been a busy month! I am going to retire in early September, so I have been preparing for that, and the working days left are now disappearing at a glorious rate.

    We had two lovely weeks on Islay, with mostly great weather, wonderful oysters, several distillery visits and a family visit to a wild sauna, where we went for a dook in the sea (50 yards from the sauna). Very refreshing

    The Primevals have had the first pass at recording for the next record, so there has been less time for listening to other things, but I have really enjoyed a compilation of instrumentals that Joe Meek produced – “Vampires, Cowboys, Spacemen and Spooks”, and I also luxuriated in Tom Waits – Rain Dogs, with so many great weird clangs and splendid guitars. Great romantic stories and shifty characters.

    I read a couple of really good poetry collections, both of which I picked up on a work trip to York, from the Amnesty International shop there. The Rattle Bag (edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heany) and Poetry with An Edge – A Bloodaxe collection edited by Neil Astley.

  3. A busy month through my job. I was on the campus of the University of Warwick after the students had left, making it feel like A Very Peculiar Practice meets 28 day Later, then Caparica a beach resort outside Lisbon for a week. It was cooler there, 26 ºC , than Sheffield, 33 ºC. I did manage to escape the meeting to get to the beach a couple of time. Then a quick visit to Barcelona. This traveling meant I spent quite a bit of time consuming media.

    Heard: caught up with some random eps of the excellent podcast, Bureau of Lost Culture. Stephen Coates has a youthful Bob Harris type voice and his themes and guests could be machined to appeal to me. I listened to the two episodes on the Incredible String Band, where he interviewed Adrian Whittaker who compiled Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending and Rose Simpson herself, also a coupla eps that took in Genesis P Orridge. One was an interview with David Charles Rodrigues about his film of Gen’s last few years and their pandrogyne project. The other was a chat with Roc Sandford. The son of Nell Dunn and Jeremy Sandford, he has had an extraordinary life, taking him from full sixties bohemia to living on his own in a tiny Hebridean island. Inter alia he spent some time in Soho being close to Orridge during their Temple Ov Psychic Youth period.

    Ten years late, I went through the whole of Sens8 as well – which is the apotheosis of Wachowskis’ schtick – and very entertaining for it. I notice J. Michael Straczynski was involved too, who always produces interesting stuff.

    Reading wise, I finally finished True Self, the Peter Matthiessen biog. I liked him less by the end, but many of his books are still a magnificent. I also read The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler – which foreshadowed McCarthy’s The Road by over twenty years, In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea by Danny Goldberg – a fairly superficial, but entertaining enough romp through 1967, mostly from a US viewpoint, by someone who was a participant – and Bullshit Jobs by the late, great David Graeber, which is entertaining, funny, and also a brilliant dissection of much of the modern world of work.

    Music-wise, I am currently obsessed by the different versions of Echus out there, a never formally released track by BoC that they played at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival they curated. When I have been zipping around I was mostly playing stuff like Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way and Gerry Mulligan’s Night Lights, fantasizing about finding a late-night bar in some obscure Catalan Bodega that I could rock up to and drink Dry Martinis into the wee hours.

      • Similarly, my elder boy will be starting his PhD at Warwick in September.

        He’s currently buggering about in Europe, but will be starting to look for somewhere to live soon – he doesn’t want halls and is thinking of Leamington Spa. Any recommendations ?

        • Not really, tbh. The halls are OK. The ones we’ve experienced have been clean and basic but heavily used. I would assume a coat of paint and a refurb are on the books in a year or two,

          The student accommodations in Coventry are apparently newer and better but are fiddly bus rides away. Leamington is the off campus place of choice. Off the pleasant central beaten track though there are some ropey looking lets but it’s only one smooth bus ride right up to the Arts Centre.

  4. So what’s taken me out of the house in July? First up was Peat and Diesel at Tonbridge Castle in Kent, a sunny open air gig. Second on the bill were Tankus, a new name to me and one that I would go and see again even if I wouldn’t seek them out to listen to. There is a lot of stagecraft and visuals going on. Peat and Diesel did pretty much the same show they always do, and as always they were great. Every single is a singalong even if the chorus is in Gaelic and half the audience has never heard it before.

    A couple of weeks later we spent the night in Greenwich so we could attend two shows at the Greenwich Comedy Festival. Jack Dee headlined the Saturday and was very funny, though my main memory is asking the people behind us to stop talking during his act. The woman of the couple look genuinely puzzled, laid her hand gently on my wrist and said, ‘Why?’ They did disappear though. Sunday was headlined by Ross Noble, who is the funniest man I have ever seen on stage with the exception of Billy Connolly. I am glad it was so warm and dry though. I imagine a Peat and Diesel gig in the rain would still be a riot, a seated comedy show less so.

    There was more comedy less than a week later when, on a whim, I headed to a local venue to see a work in progress show co-headlined by Tadiwa Mahlunge and Glenn Moore. Tadiwa was more themed and linear than I had seen him before, presumably because this is his Edinburgh hour which he was putting the finishing touches to. Glenn isn’t doing Edinburgh and this was the bare bones of his next show. Essentially it had an end, and a very funny one, but he is still,piecing together the beginning and middle. This is why the tickets were cheap, but I quite enjoyed seeing his process as jokes were either dismissed or marked up in his notes depending how well they went down.

    Towards the end of the month I went to the Arts Centre for a talk on Folk Horror by the team behind the Scarred for a life books, podcast and so on. It was quite entertaining but I came away with very little that I didn’t already know, and I dare say the same is true of many others – we were attending because we are already familiar with the best known stuff.

    Finally on the last day of the month there was a local Theatre in the Park production of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I have no idea if it was any good or not because we couldn’t hear a word. The speakers were at ground level so the sound was absorbed by the first couple of rows of punters and their camping chairs, leaving those of us at the back to wonder what the two man cast was miming.

  5. July was an intense month, especially at work. But the end of July meant the beginning of my vacation, so worth the grind just to get there.
    Oh, and a very good month for reading and watching as well (less so listening).

    Read:

    I really enjoyed the latest novel by Douglas Stuart; John of John. Just brilliantly written and a truly engaging story. I haven’t read his previous novels despite all of the praise they got, but this experience convinced me to keep reading his books (if not his backlist ones, then anything he publishes in future).

    Then I had a less engaging reading experience when I tackled a collection of Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva’s prose, essays mainly about her childhood in Russia. I did not like it… It’s just weird, on one hand she’s telling us about all the horrible things they experienced, on the other hand she’s romanticising them in a weird way (I guess because she was in Paris after the revolution when writing them, thinking she couldn’t go back), and a lot of what she’s talking about is incomprehensible (bc Russian and old and superstitions and fairy tales and upper class – and rather bad notes and footnotes explaining/not explaining the weird bits). It got dull very quickly, and also cured me of any future wish to read Pushkin!

    But all was quickly forgotten when I got my hands on the latest novel by Valeria Luiselli, the highly anticipated Beginning Middle End. It follows the mother and daughter from Lost Children Archive on a European trip after the divorce from the husband/stepfather in that novel, and it’s almost exactly as brilliant as that one was. I was so engaged I read it in a weekend, hardly able to put it down. Not only is the story wonderful and the writing brilliant, as always, it also has interesting themes and clever things to say about them. I’ve heard that some readers don’t like the ending, but I thought it was one of the best things about it!
    You don’t have to have read Lost Children Archive to read this one, but why wouldn’t you want to?

    Seen:

    I re-watched a couple of old favourite films, An Enchanted April and The Big Chill. The first is (like the novel) an eternal comfort watch, the second I hadn’t seen in years but used to have on VHS and watch a lot in the 80s/90s. I was conflicted about it, some things were better than I remembered, some worse; but I know I was conflicted back then as well. It’s quite odd, in many ways.

    The end of the World Cup of course, and lots of AFL.

    But the big hit on Swedish Public Service TV is the miniseries Svärtan (“The Blackness”), from the novel Sommaren 1985 (“The Summer of 1985”) by John Ajvide Lindqvist (of “Let Me In” fame). An absolutely brilliant series about a group of kids who meet up every summer in the Stockholm archipelago, where their families either live permanently or have/rent a summer house. This year, 1985, they are all young teens (13-14 years old), fighting hormones and parental issues, and their dynamics have shifted slightly. A tragedy has also occured on the island right before they arrive; an older teenager on the island have drowned under mysterious circumstances and the gossip machine is working overtime.
    The boys in the friend group borrow a boat and go out to a small islet, called The Blackness, which is surrounded by lore and superstition, to prove how brave they are. What they find out there and decide to rescue and bring back to the island, will alter the rest of the summer and their lives…

    It’s a great adaptation of the novel, in some ways even an improvement (the ending, in particular). It’s tense and creepy, both in the way the horror element is handled, and the grim realities of teenage angst and confusion. But also funny and realistic, especially as someone who was a teenager in 1985 (but older). With a soundtrack of 80s hits as well as a really good original score which is very atmospheric and unsettling. The actors, especially the teenage amateurs, are great in complex parts.
    I binged it in two chunks, the way it was released, and I want to re-watch it at the end of my vacation! I got my sister hooked on it too.

    I also watched The Other Bennet Sister, which was quite fun, although I thought the mum was a bit too toxic in this version…but all of it was of course quite over the top, and more fun because of it.

    Heard:

    I tried listening to Labi Siffre after buying a 3 CD set of the albums Labi Siffre and The Singer and The Song, plus a CD of bonus tracks. I didn’t really have much knowledge of him before, but had heard enough good things about (and from) him to try, but perhaps this wasn’t the time period to start with?
    I haven’t listened the required six times yet, but I can’t say that my first impressions are very good, with a couple of exceptions. The first album occasionally reminded me of Cat Stevens (which isn’t a bad thing in itself, but: less good Cat Stevens…) and the second reminded me mostly of the weird variety type entertainment that was seen on TV in the 70s. I don’t think the arrangements are very good, and his songs sort of ends abruptly, leaving you wanting a last verse to tie everything together or make any kind of point of the rest of it. I’ll try again, but it wasn’t what I expected at all!

    I also bought the latest album from Laura Cantrell, who I must have gotten mixed up with someone else, because that was NOT the music I expected or wanted! Not for me, dull.

    My only successes were two old albums that I’d heard a lot, but never owned, so I took the opportunity to get both on CD now. One was Digable Planets – Reachin’ (a new refutation of time and space), originally released in 1993. The other was Yoko Ono – Season of Glass, from 1981, re-released with bonus tracks. Both of course great.

    AOB:

    Vacation, as I said, but with a vague intent to do some DIY at home, and some rearranging of furniture. This first week was spent resting, meeting up with people and planning the work ahead; measuring the rooms and the furniture, making lists for a future IKEA haul, and visiting my favourite non-IKEA furniture store to try (expensive) chairs for my dining table (in desperate need of change).
    I don’t know how much I’ll have the energy to do in just two weeks – but I just want to get things started at least, so I won’t have any choice but to continue in weekends ahead. These plans have been brewing for years, and I meant to get things started two years ago, but then my knee got busted and everything got turned upside down!
    But I’m also hoping for a few picnic days by the water and a mini film festival at home.

      • Oh, it’s been in an “it is what it is”-stage for a while now, meaning it won’t get any better than this; it’s not what it used to be, I can walk without a crutch during the day but when I go home from work at night/after a long day of much walking/if I need to walk up and down steep hills or long stairs: then I do need a crutch…and if I overdo the walking I really feel it the next day. But I don’t let it stop me!

        The nerve pains I was having is much better as well. I do feel them occasionally at work, but when I’m not working I rarely get them. I think it’s the hard floors at work, plus standing up/walking/carrying heavy stuff all day long with only a half hour break when I can sit down…but now I only get a faint echo of the pain I used to get, and only for one or two shorter spells each day, where it used to be pretty much all day long! So despite pain in my back and my feet (arthritis) most days, I feel pretty good compared to what it used to be a year or six months ago.
        If I compare with five years ago however…I can tell I’m getting old! 😀

    • Those two early Labi Siffre albums are probably not the place to start for a newcomer. I’d suggest third album Crying Laughing Loving Lying (which contains It Must Be Love) or – my favourite – fifth album Remember My Song (which contains I Got The…, later sampled by Eminem). Both albums feature a backing band and bigger arrangements.

    • Laura Cantrell is a wonderful country singer, her ‘Not the Trembling Kind’ being a gold-star classic.

      But, perhaps you were thinking of Laura Cannell, the left- field folk musician, who is also extremely good.

      • No, I don’t think I was thinking of anyone named anything similar to her, I think I just recognised her name and assumed it was an artist I knew and liked. And then when the CD arrived and I listened to it I thought: “Hmm…I’ve never heard this before and I don’t like it much”. Sorry – not all that keen on country music I’m afraid!

      • She is indeed, but I always get her mixed up with Caitlin Cary, formerly of Whiskeytown who released a couple of decent solo albums in the early 00s. Every time Laura Cantrell is mentioned I assume Caitlin Cary has something new out, but sadly no.

        • Caitlin Cary also did a fantastic album with Thad Cockrell. I have not thought about this in years so will dig it out today. Thank you for bringing this back to mind

  6. I always seem read these posts early in the morning, in bed, before fully waking up, never able to remember a damn thing…… So, in that spirit, let’s go.
    TV has not been great, with loads of discarded series, dropped after either minutes or nearly a whole first episode, as annoyance kicks in. Against my better nature we started House of the Dragon, my expectations that it would just be more GoT, but less good. Which it is, up to a point, but still thoroughly addictive nonsense. Some of the cgi errs on the Harryhausen, but it absorbs an evening easily and enjoyably. Halfway thru series 2, and it does rattle on with speed, needing constant reminders of who quite is who, and occasionally I find myself merging the backstory into Vikings or that Bamburgh based similar series. Does it matter? Probably not.
    I was just returned from Gate to Southwell festival last month, but, as the month had changed, said little thereabouts. Now let me say what a grand little festival it is! A decent size, accommodating 5k punters over a walkable area in the North Notts agricultural belt. With a roster of artist punching above the size of the festival’s weight. Lazy, I know, but easier to post my review from elsewhere:
    https://atthebarrier.com/2026/07/10/the-gate-to-southwell-festival-review/amp/
    (Word of the day? Mcdidymophobia: a morbid fear of Scottish twins. Guess which band I didn’t see?)
    Other live was the launch gig of the Phil Odgers/John Kettle 2nd Phil Ochs tribute, War Is Over. A superb album, quite different in sound from the original singers style, live it was all the more poignant, with Odgers giving a potted history of Ochs between songs.
    I also caught Jim Moray at The Hub at St Mary’s. This glorious old church conversion houses also Lichfield library and is an object example of how such things can be done tastefully and with respect. Plus the organisers have excellent taste in the acts they book, with tix snarfed up aplenty, for shows between now and the end of the year.
    Still reading, very slowly, John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy Of Dunces. It amuses me to imagine Robbie Coltrane as the (anti)hero. I can sort of see why all the publishers he offered it to turned it and he down, but it has a grisly moreish charm.
    Two albums of the month: 1. Doing This For Love, by Kris Drever. Yes, it came out in April, but I swerved it then, just expecting more of his same. Hearing a track by chance, Bring Back Hanging (Around), I was hooked, and most of the album is of that standard, full of bittersweet acerbity, sung in his triple distilled burr. And 2. Anything That Moves by those giants of the Felixstowe scampi circuit, Helen & the Neighbourhood Dogs, which is a compact gem of country tinged East Anglicana. Here’s a link:
    https://helenandtheneighbourhooddogs.bandcamp.com/album/anything-that-moves

    • Yeah, Ignatius J. Reilly is an unforgettable character.
      Over the years, there have been quite a few plans to turn “A Confederacy of Dunces” into a film, but somehow, the plans have all been scuppered. At one point, John Belushi was in the frame to play Ignatius. Now that I would’ve liked to have seen…

      • Absolute Beginners, The Painted Bird, A Confederacy Of Dunces… we seem to have such similar taste in books! A Confederacy of Dunces I consider the funniest book I’ve ever read, rivalled only by At Swim Two Birds.

    • Went to Southwell in 2011 and 2012 when it was still small enough to fit in the open spaces within the small town. The pub gigs were a large part of the appeal. Then it went out to the racecourse and I felt it had lost something. Inevitably, I know many people who sing its praises, but I’m hardly short of festivals to go to, so I’ve not been tempted back.

      Yes, Kris Drever still raises a smile with his comedy timing on ‘Bring back hanging……’.

  7. I’ve had a month at sea. Literally (swimming in it every day) and for entertainment. I revisited the television series ‘The Terror’ and ‘The North Water’ and the films ‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’ and ‘In The Heart Of The Sea’. And I’m reading David Grann’s The Wager (very excellent so far). Shiver me timbers! Also, to get a bit more modern, I added a couple of shark films (I love shark films): Deep Water and The Bay. Deep Water, with Aaron Eckhart wasn’t bad. A good plane crash, some decent shark attacks. Whereas The Bay, starring Clint Eastwood’s daughter Francesca, was a bit too crap even for me. I’ve seen Eastwood’s son, Scott, in a couple of films and he’s quite good. (He looks just like Rowdy Yates.) But Francesca Eastwood can’t act at all. Probably only got the part in a crap b-movie like The Bay cos of her dad’s name.

    I also watched Riz Ahmed in Hamlet. Shakespeare’s original text set in a modern Indian community in London. Some dialogue is moved around and some changed a little (eg. Claudius sends Hamlet to New Delhi, instead of England). I thought it was an interesting version, gritty and raw, but not unmissable by any means. I’d rank Ahmed as a ‘second tier’ Hamlet alongside Ethan Hawke, Mel Gibson, Paapa Essiedu (‘top tier’, for me, being Andrew Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Tennant).

    • I’ve just read The Wager as well, and really enjoyed it – a brilliantly entertaining non-fiction read about an extraordinary naval incident in the 1740s. The ending was slightly anticlimactic but overall very enjoyable.

      Re Hamlet I rated Paapa Esseiedu higher than you did – the best and most enjoyable Hamlet I have seen for a long time.

      • Just finished The Wager myself. Excellent book but I agree the ending is a bit anticlimactic and a little rushed. I’ll try some of his other books though – the quality of the writing and storytelling was superb.

      • I did like Paapa Essiedu’s Hamlet a lot (great jacket too!), just as I also liked Ethan Hawke and Mel Gibson. But I think Scott, Cumberbatch and Tennant were just so outstandingly good that they belong in a different tier.

        • Fair enough – sadly didn’t see any of those. In fact now I think of it the most memorable Hamlets I have seen were all decades ago – above all Jonathan Pryce back in the early 80s.

            • @duco01
              I’d never heard of him so just looked him up. He seems rather old to play Hamlet (50 in 2000). How did that work?
              I recently watched Ian McKellen’s 20024 film of Hamlet and really couldn’t see the point in it. Having an 84-year-old Hamlet meant that a lot of the play didn’t really make sense. In fact, my third (bottom) tier for Hamlets I’ve seen would be: Ian McKellen (both 1970 and 2024), Laurence Olivier, Nicol Williamson, Kenneth Branagh, Campbell Scott, Kevin Kline.

              • Simon Russell Beale was born in 1961, which made him 39 in 2000. How old was Hamlet? Scholars disagree … but maybe somewhere between 18 and 30. But yes, you’re right: SRB was rather too old to play Hamlet. But once the play started, it was easy to overlook that. SRB put in a top performance. This YouTube clip (“What a piece of work is a man!”) is from when he reprised the role in 2025.

                For more top SRB acting, see his performances as Beria in “The Death of Stalin” and as Widmerpool in the TV adaptation of Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time”.

  8. Seen

    Watched the England games and some of the others in the World Cup. I’m enjoying the ordure being heaped on Argentina which is richly deserved. Saw the Jon Amor Blues Band at Tring Blues club – ancient audience but very receptive to the ex-Hoax guitarist in trio format with superb rhythm section. Saw a French trio in a bar in Etretat doing Irish folk music. One of them apologised to me in advance that one of the songs wasn’t nice to the English. Turned out to be an IRA ditty…you can probably guess the rest. I kept a fixed smile on my face but didn’t like it much. Shame really as otherwise they were excellent. My own band had a nice gig in a courtyard of a restaurant bringing our summer tour of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire to a close. Bloody hot weather and folk rock.

    Heard

    I mentioned the new Mike Campbell album elsewhere. Excellent set of guitar rock with not a note too many and actually sounds like people having fun in a small room with real amps and guitars. Also been exploring the dustier end of Brit folk rock – Trimdon Garage Explosion anyone? An offshoot of the excellent Eighteenth Day of May.

    Read

    Went on holiday at the end of the month and got into rereading “Watching the English ” by anthropologist Kate Fox. Excellent and good fun with the number of “I do that” moments you have. Also read Alvesdon by James Holland, historian in his day job but writes fiction too. Saying it is undemanding would overstate the complexity of the plot but ideal for baking hot Normandy. Also reading Russia by Martin Sixsmith which is a bit of a brick so I go through a couple of eras then have a break. Currently enjoying A Private View by Anita Brookner – it’s about a newly retired bloke having his preconceptions about life thrown up in the air. Mmm, wonder what appealed to me about that one?

    Here’s a bit of Jon Amor. You’re in the wrong place if you want innovation and cutting edge but most enjoyable with a beer in a crowded room.

  9. Seen

    Apple TV series called Silo – yet another “dystopian future” – in this version everyone lives in a 140 level silo beneath the earth and what’s really outside is the subject of much conjecture. It’s very watchable, the usual edge of your seat ending for each episode. I’m up to the last ep of series 1 and there’s another 2 series to go. Not sure I’ll make it but enjoying the ride so far.

    Waiting for Mrs M to finish reading The Odyssey before we go and see the film…(sigh)…

    Heard

    Strawberry Alarm Clock – yep they’re still going, and all current members were interviewed on a recent episode of the excellent Strange Brew podcast. Here’s their instrumental version of a Fabs classic from their recent album. I like it.

    I also listened to After Bathing At Baxters by Jefferson Airplane, for the first time ever – I bought the Surrealistic Pillow LP back then but somehow never got round to hearing/buying this. It’s great, every song is unexpectedly different.

    Read

    The Murder House by Mark Billingham. Feeling the need of a bit of classic British police procedural I grabbed this at random off the shelf of our local library. Only to realise halfway through that I may have read it before, or maybe I read the one before this which is referenced throughout the book. Anyway it’s good stuff. Have the Tom Thorne books been made into a TV series? Or film?

    • The first two Thorne books Sleepyhead and Scaredycat were made into 6 part TV series back in 2010, with David Morrissey in the lead role. Other characters underwent a change of gender or ethnicity, but were otherwise enjoyable. Beats me how the virtually comatose Roy Grace books have been more extensively covered.

      At a book signing Billingham said his hopes for further books being filmed stalled due to Morrissey’s role in the Walking Dead. A couple of his non Thorne books – Rush of Blood and In The Dark – were adapted for TV but came and went without me catching them.

  10. And so ends another month of doing and consuming very little.

    Heard:
    Rolling Stones – Foreign Tongues.
    Despite the detraction around the sound/production/mixing, I’m thoroughly enjoying repeated plays, particularly “in The Stars” and “Divine Intervention”.
    Only real concern here is that this album, and Maccas recent release are sitting in the Top of the Year End lists – no bad thing, but surely I’m missing some new somewhere.

    The accepted order for Led Zep albums is 4 1 3 2 (which coincidentally is my bank card PIN).
    Peter Gabriel has done a reverse-Zeppelin – I’ve owned on vinyl, but never CD – this month I rectified that, and 2 3 1 4 is the correct sequence

    Seen:
    Again, I feel like I’m in some sort of time warp, as two enjoyable things appearing on my telly screen have been new series of Van der Valk (with subdued title toon, not bouncing MOR as once was), and Bergerac (with subdues title toon, shorn of Dave Gilmour’s guitar (new urban myth starts here …))
    More up to date – second series of The Undeclared War is worth a watch (although I did have to watch series 1 again to remind me of the background story)

    Read
    Mojo still keeps arriving in my letterbox, and I’m reading it more out of duty than necessity.

    The Football Mavericks – When Flair Wore Flares.
    The tales of how players like Osgood, Hudson, George, Currie & Worthington delighted fans but never really got the chance internationally as Ramsey, Revie, and Greenwood played a system with no real room for wildcards.
    2026 – could’ve done with a bit of flair rather than the relatively slow and resort to deep defensive worry.
    Although the game against France was like watching a different side – was the pressure/expectation off – the game was played like a “shit or bust” affair. Bit like mid-90s Newcastle United – we will attack, you will attack, but hopefully we’ll score more than you.

  11. Seen
    When I comment on what I have seen, it is never telly and extremely rarely cinema. What does delight me is architecture. Now, my favourite building in Cheshire is nearby Jodrell Bank, but what I hadn’t expected was the discovery of another modernist treasure in my next parish. I mean, I knew it was there; I used to live in Ollerton and almost certainly my taps used to get their water from here. What I didn’t know was what a brilliant job they’d done on conversion, enhancing the building and the setting. I was so delighted, I did the walk a second time later in the month.
    https://knutsfordconstruction.co.uk/gallery/moss-view-tower/

    Otherwise, Warwick Folk Festival almost closed the month which, together with the precursory day to Sidmouth proper, meant I got to dance to Naragonia three times in a week. Oh *kin’ joy!!! This Flemish band are fast becoming the go-to for Eurobal enthusiasts. So, while Fisherman’s Friends were paying for the festival, my dance nut friends and I were, literally, having a ball. In fact, the whole dance programme was tiptop, with ceilidhs from Relentless, Hekety and Spiers & Boden. Special mention too for Sam Carter’s excellent show of Nic Jones’ work.

  12. It’s the start of the summer school holidays, I took my daughters to the UK, we did some charity shopping in Witham (surprisingly good haul of books (including the Alan Bennett autobiography in the free section of Tesco’s), a visit to a farm, then up to London to go up St Paul’s (Stone Gallery views are amazing), into Tate Modern (missing the Frida Kahlo exhibition – sold out), swim in Brockwell Park Lido (cloudy water, but cold and fresh, and like stepping back in time to the 60s) and visit one Prom. Good things mainly.

    Read
    I finished reading “Love Affairs for Grown Ups” by Debbie Holt, which is a light rom-com you could imagine Bill Nighy in. That was from a book box in Bonn. From a chazza in Witham I read completely “Hausfrau” by Jill Alexander Essbaum, which is the complete opposite of the Holt book.
    Set in Zürich and its suburbs, a city I knew very well in the 1980s, Hausfrau details with painstaking accuracy the geography of the region (from Rapperswil to Greifensee, with a castle there I never knew existed though we lived less than 3 km from there), the polite, ordered, gendered conservative, claustrophic nature of the Swiss Germans, and the fractured and collapsing inner life of the main protagonist. The people and the places were just as I remembered from 40 years ago, it was uncanny. And though what happened to the main character has been described by critics as not credible, from what I observed of the life of expat women in my parents social circles, I found it quite believable, and chilling, down to the predictability of the train timetables. @Dai might find it interesting as a fellow former Zürcher. It was an utter page turner.

    Saw
    As I said, we went to the Proms. Unlike other AWers, this was for me a dismal affair. ‘Horrible Science’ was billed as a show with Newton, Einstein, Curie and Johnson (the woman who calculated the moon rocket trajectory) and pop classics like Holst’s Planets. I imagined something like the Royal Institution Christmas lectures – a bit smug and middle class, but educational and worthy – good on the music and the science. It wasn’t. It was a load of shit – ‘zany’ actors doing a ‘will-this-do’ shouting fest around a dismal kids tv hero/villain schtick plot, with moments of music carelessly dropped in from the luckless orchestra stuck in the middle of it. My daughters thought it was shite too, but gamely enjoyed being in the surroundings of the Albert Hall for the first time.
    Better by far than that was the first of the free concerts put on in Bonn last Friday – punk ska from Bonn (Roskapankki) and agitpop-gender activist punk from Berlin (MandelKokainSchnaps).

    Watched
    Just Ann Droid. Pushed through shorts on YouTube, when I finally watched it, it was entertaining though I’d seen the best bits. Diane Morgan can do no wrong, probably one of the funniest actors in Britain today. But it did make me reflect on how much tv is targeted at the old. The son character is one of several failing at life middle aged male characters I have seen in recent years – inheritors of the ‘Sorry’ Timothy role. It leaves a faintly depressing aftertaste. Just noticed the post by @moseleymoles. I shall read with interest.

    Heard
    But things are looking up. I am looking forward to seeing OMD in Bonn on Friday night, and the Green Man Festival next week (anyone else going?). Preparing for that, I have been going through the line-up, trying to listen to some of the hundred+ bands and acts, almost all of which are new to me. Baxter Dury and Mannequin Pussy I do know and am looking forward to. Of those others I have heard, the following sound like they will be worth a punt: Ana Frango Elétrico, Automatic, Avalon Emerson & The Charm, Glasshouse Red Spider Mite, Itch, Karma Sheen, Marla Kether

      • Names I know (apart from The Bug Club, Knats, Panic Shack). I will give them a spin.

        Anna Calvi sounded good as well, when I listened to her. Wolf Alice as well. Tamikrest I forgot to mention as one I have on my must-see list. North African desert blues? Yes please!

        I am sure a bit of Scientist will go down nicely in the Welsh hills, especially if the bass woofers are up to scratch (I am Mel Smith to your Rowan Atkinson in the Hi-fi sketch).

        Sparks and The Beta Band are talismanic around these parts, so I should be careful in what I say. But I won’t. They are a bit meh to me, especially the second band. @callcopse, who I am going with, thinks I am a philistine. I won’t be standing in front of the stage with hands crossed, expressing ‘prove me wrong’ vibes. That would not be a good look. But I am still somewhat sceptical.

        The real elephant in the room is of course Wilco. I am looking forward to seeing them. I have never got into their music, not hearing any distinctive voice, but they give off such a pleasant Neil Young feel, that I am hoping for the live experience to catch my left brain off guard and go straight for the right brain.

        Are you going yourself, @fentonsteve?

        • Afraid I won’t be going, as I’ll be in Norfolk. We’re considering going to Latitude 2028 if we can have our campervan parked in Southwold and cycle to the Henham park site every day.

          The Bug Club, Knats and Panic Shack are all acts that non-AW pals have raved about recently, so my definition of “I’ll check them out at a festival” bands.

          • Out of interest @fentonsteve why would you not take your campervan into the festival itself? I totally get that being able to have a break from “festival enforced wackiness” is sometimes a must but I’ve taken the van in on a few occasions now, (admittedly not Latitude, at least not yet) camped there for the whole thing, and found it most agreeable. It’s certainly the only way I’d ever camp at a festival again.

            • You’d have to ask Mrs F that, as I can’t think of a sensible answer. Proper toilets and showers (and quieter nights) at the Southwold harbour campsite, perhaps? It is only 5 miles flat bike ride from the harbour to Henham park.

              We were once staying in Southwold when Latitude was on. I remember sitting in the back garden with a pint of Adnams and listening to Arcade Fire doing Neon Bible material, which sounded a bit like New Order to me.

              • Yes, I can completely understand that. It’s definitely nice to have quiet nights and proper showers (although our van does have a shower) and the ability to cook your own food, which is another of my festival bugbears, the sheer price of the crappy fare usually on sale.

  13. Go on @salwarpe, give Sparks a go!

    How big is Green Man? Without knowing anything about it, I could imagine Sparks going down a storm.

    I have a dream/plan that Sparks play Latitude next year by which time myself and Fräu Steady will be well into our retirement and “hopefully” in possession of a motor home. No more slumming it I’m afraid.

    • I am sure I will. My fear is that they are a droll comedy duo in the style of They Might Be Giants, Ben Folds 5, Randy Newman or Flight of Conchords (alienating even more people with my musical ignorance there). A group to applaud because of their frightfully clever aperçus dropped into the lyrics. I bet they won’t be.

      How big? 25,000 apparently – so an eighth of Glastonbury (and a microdot of Woodstock)

  14. Don’t think they are quite like that but I understand your misgivings. I’d say they are quite British and dry though. They obviously have a very large back catalogue and if they play a Greatest Hits set then every song would be a banger. The connection between band and audience is something to behold (I’ve seen them at the Manchester Apollo and Albert Hall in the last few years so not Enormo Domes) so maybe a festival headlining spot might be a bit much.

  15. Bit late to the party once again but here goes…been a bit busy with post-retirement hustle this month so a bit less spare time!

    SEEN
    Went to see Ricky Gervais play a relatively small gig (for him) at Woking Theatre. Although a big fan of The Office, Extras and Afterlife I’ve not really been a huge fan of his standup. This was billed as a “work in progress” show, and we came away feeling it was, well, OK. But you need to ignore a lot of the “I’ve got loads of cash” type comments. Even if you were a much bigger fan than I, I’d say this work in progress needed work.

    HEARD
    Not much in the way of new albums for me this month, but singer/songwriter/musician Alison Eales’ versions of XTC songs on youtube are delightful. Worth a look if you’re a Partridge/Moulding fan, like me.

    Listened to plenty of old this month…Saint Etienne are perfect for summer, and The Beastie Boys “Mix Up” might be my favourite album they put out.

    READ
    “Strangers On The Shore” by Michael Smith was a really enjoyable “autofiction” book about the author’s move from a gentrifying Shoreditch to Hastings. A tale of living out towards the margins and years later colliding with Covid, which truly knocks him for six. Honestly much more enjoyable than it sounds as it is intelligently written and extremely thoughtful.

    AOB
    Still waiting for a hospital appointment re my 3 years post replacement knee issues. Getting slowly more uncomfortable by the week.

    I’ve signed up with the University of the 3rd Age. Anyone else tried it? Plenty of activities in my local area, and I might join a nearby Ukulele group early in September.

  16. SEEN
    The return of Granite Harbour on iPlayer. Mrs F went to Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, so much shouting of “I’ve been there” as the camera pans round.

    Linda Ronstadt: the Sound of my Voice on iPlayer. A big-budget career oversight documentary. Much to like for AWers.

    HEARD
    Not new, but new to me: Linda Ronstadt. I only really knew her from the awful syrup she did with James Ingram and Aaron Neville in the 1980s. I picked up volume 1 of her Greatest Hits for a quid in a charity shop and really liked it. I see Volume 2 almost everywhere, so that’s now on my list.

    READ
    Guy Pratt – My Bass and Other Animals.
    Picked it up for a quid and read it on holiday. Cattily entertaining.

    John Harris – The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the demise of English Rock.
    400+ pages of close type. I finally got round to reading this, it having sat upon my shelf for years. I lived through the Britpop wars and I still learnt a lot. It justifies its excellent reputation.

    AOB.
    I had a lovely week at the seaside, but the day before we left, Mrs F’s boss rang to inform she was going to hand her notice in and would Mrs F like a promotion? So Mrs F’s week was spent chewing it over. She’s decided not to take on even more at this stage in her career, which I think is the correct choice. But whatever I said was wrong, so I went swimming in the sea and charity shopping.

    The following 3-day week was off work as I had another colonoscopy (my sixth, I think). One day of purge, one of procedure, one of recovery, so that was my work week done. Despite being off the meds for 18 months, I’m still in good shape (internally, at least). I don’t think I’ll be starting the Humira yet.

    I’ve done another two episodes of Charity Shop Classics while the regular hosts were on their summer holidays. People seem to like it (or they are just being polite). I’ve approached my local community radio station with mind of doing something similar, but on a more regular basis.

    • re: John Harris – The Last Party: Britpop, Blair and the demise of English Rock.

      I was intrigued, so went to Amazon to look it up … apparently I already own it (and no doubt read it, or why did I buy it?).
      Am now trawling the book shelves looking for it as I think a re-read may be in order

    • Good to hear another successful colonoscopy under the belt. I am now on a once every 3 years schedule unless I get poorly in-between. Think I have had more than 6 though 🙁

  17. SEEN

    It’s summer there’s nothing good on, except sport (but am watching less of that than I used to). Cinema for Disclosure Day which I liked very much despite somewhat mixed reviews. I found it very Hitchcockian in places, which is always a good thing.

    HEARD

    Mainly new Stones album, which I really like about 2/3rds of. It sounds much better on vinyl, I spent some time playing with different phono pre-amps, built in and external to find the best sound (external was the winner). Also some catching up with St Vincent after the magnificent gig I saw in late June. Live in July I saw Canadian legends The Guess Who at the Ottawa Bluesfest, an acquaintance of mine was on guitar and they were very good, ticket was a special price of $25, nice!

    READ

    Dipping in and out of The Radio Times Guide to TV comedy (Mark Lewisohn), an incredible work of research and solid writing. I can see why The Beatles books are taking so long.

    AOB

    Went to PEI (Prince Edward Island) with my brother who was over for a couple of weeks. It’s a 1300km drive one way, but I always enjoy going every 2 or 3 years. Weather was generally ok, but July was the wettest month ever recorded in Ottawa, bit of a difference to what the UK has been having. August has started in the same fashion, mostly hot and humid but thunderstorms every 2 or 3 days and the odd Tornado warning.

    • It is, takes about 13 hours. A friend of mine has done it in one day which is pretty crazy. I decided to overnight in Quebec on the way and New Brunswick on the way back. Roads are generally very good (Trans Canada Highway), but there were quite a lot of roadworks and lots of uneven surfaces giving my suspension a good working over

  19. Been a long time away from here… better late than never for a glorious return.

    Read:

    Working my way through Stuart Maconie’s “With A Little Help From Their Friends” at the moment. Essentially, it seems to cover similar ground to Craig Brown’s “One Two Three Four” – pen portraits of various people associated with the Fab Four – but not in an unpleasant way. I think on balance I preferred the Craig Brown, but they’re both undemanding fun if you’re a former pre-teen Fabs obsessive, as I once was.

    Also labouring through “The Body Keeps The Score” by Dr Bessel van der Kolk, which I think(?) is fairly well-known, an examination of how trauma replays itself physiologically. It’s not an easy read for me, full of quite dense, scientific stuff that I have to confess sometimes escapes me, but I’m persevering with it in small doses. About 20 pages at a time seems to be my limit.

    Saw:

    “L’Etranger” at a local indie cinema – yes, it’s an adaptation of the Camus novel by a French director, whose name I’m afraid fail to recall. Nicely shot in moody B&W, well-acted and I found the sombre, austere, tone very engaging. Then they go and spoil it a little by (with crushing inevitability) tacking That Cure Song onto the end credits. Not that I dislike the song, but it felt like a slightly lame/inappropriate thing to do. Maybe just me…

    Heard:

    Living off charity shop or secondhand CD’s these days (I live a relatively analogue life). Recent buys:

    “Strangely Strange But Oddly Normal” – a compilation of Island Records stuff dating from 1968 – 1972. A nice mix of obvious names (Tull, Fairport, Free, Cat Stevens) and some interesting lesser-known picks, of which “Watercolour Days” by Clouds and “I Keep Singing That Same Old Song” by Heavy Jelly very much floated my boat.of.soup. Nothing terrible on there, though I routinely skip a White Noise track that’s basically unsettling noise… It generally goes well with WFH.

    “Living In The Past” – the Tull comp from I think 1971(?) I’m not a massive fan of anything much they did after that but I love that brief early line-up (before Glenn Cornick leaves, essentially). It has all four early hits – all wonderful but I’ve got a special place in my heart for “Sweet Dream” which a sibling used to have when we were kids.

    AoB:

    Nowt much really. I’ve fought hard over the last coupla decades to get a more stable, secure life and finally achieved it – stress-free job, cheap flat, good mates, just enough money coming in, etc . Now, obviously, I’m bored out of my skull and feel a bit flat. No pleasing some people, etc etc…

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