Things we like

Joanna Newsom

Jo Newsom is a harpist with a voice like Lisa Simpson crossed with Kate Bush.  She has no right to be as wonderful as she is. Click here for more.

Sturdy nineteenth century novels

Books like Great Expectations, North and South, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment…  Beefy characters.  Beefy plot.  Worlds you can get lost in.  Great Expectations once got me through five hours on a train in Thailand.  There was no room so I perched outside on the carriage steps.  It was raining.  Every ten minutes a snack vendor would climb over me with a tray of fried food.  I didn’t care because I was reading my book.

Driving with a Drumkit

Just jab at the accelerator and be rewarded with a drumroll from the snare on the back seat.

Knowing that there’s a book called “how to start up and run your own magazine”

and refusing to read it.

Slim, self-aware twentieth century novels

Books like Pale Fire or If on a winter’s night a traveller…  Sometimes they’re maddening.  When I read If on a winter’s night a traveller I really did have fleeting moments of thinking I was losing my mind.

Trying to attend an exhibition on self-published magazines without knowing the exhibition’s name, or location

Even better is finding it despite it being disguised as a public library inside a solicitors office.

Breaking News

Great song by Half Man Half Biscuit.  A rant against council workers, the middle classes and Lisa Riley. Click here for more.

Thinking about the edge of the universe

If there is one then beyond it there is nothing and nothing doesn’t exist so there can’t be.  If there isn’t one then everything goes on forever.  Think about this for more than a couple of seconds and you get vertigo combined with butterflies.

The Green Man Festival

The QF found its spiritual home (and Jo Newsom) at this oversized family outing. 

Muddied Day-glo Religious Fervour

Click here to see Tim’s collection of gospel meeting signs discovered in Fort William.

Holbein’s portrait of Erasmus

It’s in the National Gallery in London.  Erasmus has a cold, bony face.  He’s wearing a coat with a fur collar and cuffs and you can see every single hair.  In this portrait Erasmus looks more like a real person who you could sit down and have a conversation with than anyone else in the National. Click here to see it.

Paintings by Paul Klee

Not tediously figurative, not alienatingly abstract.  Just right.  And the colours are great.

The sort of wind which nearly blows you over

It’s better than no wind and actually being blown over.

Terrestrial and heavenly globes

Especially spinning them round aimlessly, faster and faster, till everything starts to blur.

Dogs

They’re dirty, they’re messy, they’re noisy but they mean well.  Some anthropologists think human beings wouldn’t have bothered to develop language if they hadn’t needed to give dogs hunting commands.  So maybe the first human word was ‘fetch’ as in ‘Fetch mammoth!’

Coffee in Manchester

In most respects the city makes us uncomfortable and afraid.  But having spurious ‘meetings’ in city coffee shops is undoubtedly a Good Thing.

The small black clip which attaches my rucksack straps to the main bag

It disappeared at the hands of Malaysian Airlines luggage handlers.  I phoned the manufacturer Karrimor where a friendly old Scottish lady knew exactly the part I meant and sent me another one (and a spare) free of charge the next day.