A new instalment of INVENTORY is available now via the @backlisted.bsky.social Patreon. This week: A virtual walking tour of the lost record shops of Croydon. Big thanks to @grindrod.bsky.social @brownwindsor.bsky.social and @rockingbob.bsky.social. #CroydonTillIDie www.patreon.com/backlisted

BREAKING NEWS: We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that the Southbank Centre - the Hayward Gallery, Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall and skaters undercroft - has finally been Grade II listed by DCMS after a 35 year long campaign. ➡️ c20society.org.uk/news/southba...

Life goes on.

Leafing through a 1970 issue of Rolling Stone with a horrible photo of a man holding a playing card up to the camera, wedged behind his big toe. I do not pause to find out who it is.

Surely David Bowie's finest moment? Sir Roland Moorecock in Dream On (1991).

I would rather not.

My most fascinating, misunderstood read of 2025, written 67 years ago by Toby Young's dad. A science fiction novel masquerading (with the connivance of its publisher!) as sober sociological enquiry. It coins the term 'meritocracy' and then just savages its implications over 190 pages.

Stressed lady working on her laptop in the swimming pool changing rooms.

River Deben this morning

Ralph Waldo Emerson Fittipaldi! I got Ralph Waldo Emerson Fittipaldi.

Behold the people of Redditch New Town!

Martin Parr has died & this grimmest gloomiest greyest, Sundayest of Sundays is the perfect day to watch Signs of the Times. All four extraordinary episodes are full of pathos, beauty & humour, life & love stories told through relationships with interiors & objects www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Day 3 of #Sketchpadvent High speed suburban hovercraft. About time. Peter Sullivan, 1961, from The Story of Hovercraft

Day 2 of #sketchpadvent with this 1961 visualisation of Brixton by Kenneth Browne, complete with unbuilt motorway box thundering across it

Four pictures I took in Margate in 2006.

This travelled to me from 1965, complete with a pristine compliments slip from the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Sussex University.

A lot of commentators avoiding this, but by far the most logical explanation for UK Labour leadership's current behaviour is that they have been possessed by Satan.

"It's a room full of smart curmudgeons tonight!" Overheard while waiting to take our seats for Stewart Lee.

Good morning. Here's an antifascist anthem in case you need one. youtu.be/4QDLXZRhqAA?...

Seemingly alone in my annual indifference to Halloween. One strugghouls on.

Noticed that the class in Unman, Wittering and Zigo uses the same Latin textbook that we had at my real-life toxic minor public school.

Should you be looking for bathroom design inspiration here are some colorful ideas from the late 70s. Couldn't resist picking up a catalogue of sanitary ware from a local bus stop/ book swap. I mean, just look at the colour chart 😍

Something from 90 years ago.

People doing their Duolingo out loud on the bus.

Seen at The Royal Academy. By Leigh Clarke, 1986.

Rhoda, Saxondale, George & Mildred, Ever Decreasing Circles, Colin from Accounts, Bewitched, The Odd Couple, Rising Damp, King of the Hill, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

The FA have announced that, with immediate effect, football matches will be just one second in duration. So now it's all kicking off.

Chuffed to have a long article in the FT magazine’s design special today: How To Make A New Town

Farewell beautiful Terence Stamp. Never better than running around in a pink onesie in The Mind of Mr Soames. (Well, not until Priscilla came along anyway!) #terencestamp

I sat down with my favourite writer, and her band. We talked about love and language and healing and sex. inews.co.uk/culture/musi...

Sitting in a Suffolk pub listening to the man at the next table enumerate all his sauces. "Five shelves." Bliss.

Afternoon swim curtailed by the discovery of an infant poo.

"This could be the first straw before the camel's back breaks." Person on podcast.

Vivien Leigh, photographed by Cyril Arapoff, 1936.

Verona Excited to look up the name of the font used in the first picture in due course.

Other work of the Ladybird artists. ‘Eastbourne’ (circa 1950) Artist: Ronald Lampitt

3. Christ’s Hospital, Horsham; photographer unknown; via ‘Hard Landscape in Brick’, Cecil C. Handyside, 1976.

"Listen sweetheart, I couldn't give a SHIT about the solid state circuitry," bellows Alan Lake.

+BBC CLOCK COMPETITION+ We won't be making a run of these but this Bank Holiday weekend you can win a one-off 90s inspired BBC ident clock. Follow, Like & RP to enter. Winner announced Mon AM. We've also restocked our 'Radiophonic' inspired signs & other items. hiddenbritain.bigcartel.com

[Hove seafront] "You know Pink Floyd?" "Yeah?" "That's his house!"

The London Road charity shops were full of alliterative adventures today.

The dual enunciation-challenge cafés of London Road. Do you carefully pinch off each word, or just run them together so it sounds like noodles treat and cutie?

Lovely little exhibition of architect Peter Hirst’s work for Croydon, Sutton, Berkshire and Somerset, at the urban room in the Whitgift Centre. He was there today talking about being Peter Smithson’s student at the AA

Extraordinary banter between the two young men cleaning the pool changing rooms: "I'm quite into oxymorons actually, which I find conceptually interesting."

Inside this book I just bought: a boarding pass stub from a flight out of Tangier fifty years ago.

Novum magazine cover by Andrè Chante. June 1972.

#19 of 25 MEDICAL HISTORY OBJECTS for 2025 💉 "The Tooth Worm as Hell's Demon,” 18th century. The two halves open to reveal a scene about the infernal torments of a tooth worms which people believed caused cavities. Complete with mini skulls, hellfire, and naked people wielding clubs.

A Room in Chelsea Square, 1958, by Anonymous - who turns out to be Michael Nelson, republished a bit by @valancourtbooks.bsky.social. Chelsea Square is apparently the fourth most expensive address in the UK now.