Moving away from food, such an obvious area, I miss from the charity shop a good selection of New English Library paperbacks, perhaps a Herbert, Van Vogt or Heinlein with a green, yellow and purple Bruce Pennington cover.

And has the Tennants lager cans with the lovely ladies on the side also gone? The Madeleine for many students in the 80s.

also the snowflake – white chocolate – get it.

we are fighting lockdown 3 boredom by eating a chocolate bar a day and rating it by weight/price ratio (quant) plus Taste, Texture, Design (qual. marks/5)

MIA I would like to include in the research exercise: […]

we are fighting lockdown 3 boredom by eating a chocolate bar a day and rating it by weight/price ration (quant) plus Taste, Texture, Design.

MIA I would like to include in the research exercise: Frys 5 Centres […]

Thanks for the kind comments both. Not always an easy read, but definitely rewarding.

I should now add that I have my dad’s Mondaine in an envelope in several pieces waiting for me to take it to a watch repair shop to see if it can be reassembled.

Review copy provided by Net Galley.

Interesting how watches are such a great father-son thing. I wear a Mondaine swiss railway watch – my second. The first I bought from a Guardian offer fifteen years ago, on the recommendation of my dad who has […]

Trump’s first tweet on his return to Twitter was unexpected.

Ok let’s get this thread back on track. All of the above are one-way streets: source material the novel adapted into film or TV. Any examples of successful versions the other way – films made into novels. A quick […]

Yes I think they know when it comes to TV they are the past rather than the future, but as a broadband provider they are set fair for many years.

@baron-harkonnen glad you liked Kolmynsky Heights, a slow burn at the start, and always at risk of teetering into incredulity, but he brings the story off brilliantly by the end. Proper page turner. I agree that […]

Reboots better than the original. Entry One.

Sharecropping is a scifi term for the commodification of a story (worlds, characters etc) which can then be assigned to other authors. Long practicised by authors like Asimov for the Foundations and Herbert for […]

@marwood we did exactly that – what Virgin offer over and above the freeview channels we weighed against Netflix and found mostly unused. So downgrading to their most basic package from ‘fullhouse’ has saved us […]

Great set-up with El Hoyo, but like many a horror film the film-makers find it’s a lot easier to set something up than resolve it.

If you’ve read Wolf Hall then Bring Up The Bodies is an absolute must. The Mirror and the Light is perhaps more of a commitment but BUTB is a perfect sequel.

BS Johnson thread! Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry is one of my favourite novels. Not got a copy of the Unfortunates and will put it on my reward list for when the to-read shelf is cleared..