Places
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‘Decline Porn’: how far right YouTubers are pretending to be scared of London
Despite my excessively, almost self-parodically left-wing search history, I noticed recently that YouTube is trying to get me to click on videos of angry-looking white men doing walk-and-talk videos around London. In these, said white men (and, occasionally, women) walk around multicultural areas of London like Brixton and Whitechapel – let’s face it, it’s often Read more
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This is the Sound of the Suburbs
Home improvements / In our dream home / Home improvements / We’re never moving. – Straight Life, Black Box Recorder There is something about suburbia I’ve always been running from. It has therefore been instructive to spend Christmas in a semi-detached house on the edge of Luton. [1] I took a Boxing Day walk, on Read more
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South London by Thameslink
In Croydon there are towers high, lean, and empty. At the station, an older woman with a natty blue rinse limps for the front carriage, and passes a human-shaped package in a pushchair. This is topped with a hat with bear ears, poking out from the swaddled layers below. High visibility clothing must be worn Read more
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Eric Idle live at The Royal Albert Hall
There’s a kind of person who loves Terry Pratchett. A hoopy frood who always knows where his towel is. They could be neurodivergent, or maybe not – it doesn’t matter. They respect Brian May, as an astronomer. They’ve dabbled in steam punk, know Alan Moore better than he knows himself, and could quote any scene Read more
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This Machine Kills Wasps with MJ Hibbett & Chris Thorpe-Tracey, The Highchurches, Lilla Multipass, Leslie Bloom and Verity Grebble
This was a special, sweaty little show, which will live long in the memory of all who attended. It was a bit of a last minute job. Chris and Mark have a beautiful project in which they’re doing a new, stripped down album of Hibbett songs accompanied by piano. They’re songs from the sadder end Read more
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The Highchurches / The Hognutters Mummers at Rottingdean Windmill
Rottingdean Windmill was host to the Wilde Volk exhibition this weekend – a display of masked, often animalistic figures in folklore. So who better to perform at its opening than the Hognutters Mummers, with their traditional “give us money or booze or we will beat you up” play of death and rebirth, and pig costumes Read more
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Pells Pool, Lewes
For all its myriad charms, Brighton lacks a good, old-fashioned, public outdoor pool or Lido. [1] It had one once – at Black Rock, below Kemptown, before the dirt, dust and noise that came with the construction of Brighton’s crappy Marina put punters right off their morning breast stroke. It closed in 1978, and the Read more
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The Portsmouth to Gosport Ferry
My mum moves out of Southsea tomorrow. She has been busy with the emotional task of chucking out what needs to be chucked out, and putting into storage what needs to be put into storage, as she continues to look for somewhere new to live in the old, familial lands of Nottingham. Last week I Read more
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Walking from Lewes to Rottingdean
On a windy, sunny Sunday afternoon, I got my butt out of my usual, sometimes self-defeating patterns of weekend behaviour and took myself up into the Downs. I’m very lucky to have the South Downs National Park on my doorstep, and I have been rationing bits of it out to myself slowly. My brain forever Read more
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