This cleverly repositions all the other Hey Kids Rock ‘n’Roll mobile decorations - Joni Mitchell, Quentin Crisp, Sade, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, even Nick and Nora… - as the guest star killer Columbo has to pin down.

The tunnel of light to home. Wooded path. Long exposure with torch. Different ISO settings / running into the darkness to pose before walking back. Could have done this for hours. A nearby field is earmarked for houses, so only a year of this before I’m mistaken for marsh lights.

I like that the missing letters for Sheep and Lambs look like they’ve been taken by wolves. Picked off in the dead of night . Word wolves.

I heard a rustle in the hedge line, glanced behind me, and there the figure stood. Watching… (watching the sunset, and then - like all ghosts - heading towards town. Possibly to the chippie)

These test pieces @bugshaw.bsky.social brought back from her darning class look beautifully like fireworks in a night sky - especially the reverse of the repair, I now fancy having a jumper that is 76% firework darning. (I don’t expect Bridget to make this for me)

“Ladies and Gentleman. Don’t go anywhere yet, as we’ve also got a fantastic light show!!!” The Bonfire, now fuelled only by builders pallets, barely 8 feet tall, and no longer with its annual sacrifice, crackles slighty as it cries into its flames.

The town fireworks display on the common behind my house. The DJ doing what DJ’s do best - interrupting the chorus of Pink Pony Club so they can make an announcement.

Filming a bit of my walk for Bridget. I wanted to show her the deer, but didn’t realise one was a stag. I rarely see stags with their antlers, and this one was watching me watching him. (music - a tiny bit of Eric Chenaux, just to mute my voice going “oooh look”)

The horses having finished their Dungeons and Dragons game…

The carousel and its little waning moon.

I turned a corner and, mesmerised by my torch beam, they were motionless for long enough to take a photo. Then they ran towards the popcorn popping sky over the hill (a village firework display). Their ember eyes and the way they’ve gathered under the pole make them seem a little alien.

Today marks the release of @jilk.bsky.social 's jilk.bandcamp.com/album/fix-yo... - which (and I'll stop harping on about it now) has a photo of my mother as the cover art. It's Bandcamp Day so all money goes to the band (and you'll also receive a reassuring text from my mother about your hair)

Joni Mitchell's birthday! I adore this song. Far from classic period Mitchell, but it makes love feel like an exciting map in the frontispiece of a novel People talk to tell you something Or to take up space Guess I'm only talking To be talking to Your pretty face www.youtube.com/watch?v=50tn...

A crocodile of pre-schoolers, looking like a row of fireworks in their bright safety jackets and hats, standing by the side of the town common, patiently waiting for the funfayre lorry to park up. On the back of the truck a ferris wheel, all crumpled up like the discarded first page of a novel.

Back from dentist. Have had to have an entire back tooth removed due to it cracking very badly on toast. “It may come out in stages…” warned the dentist. “Like a Roman pot coming out of the soil” I interjected, a hundred episodes of Time Team leaping at once into my head. “Yes”

Sharing @jilk.bsky.social’s explanation of their new album cover, alongside my mother’s recent joking response to her photo being used.

A photo of my father who, while looking to tidy the bookshelves behind the armchair, has found behind the books….another full shelf of books. Like Narnia, only you push through the wardrobe to find more wardrobe, and more wardrobe beyond that. Miles of wardrobe.

Music where you least expect It is wonderful. There should be drummers in the hedgerow and lead guitarists, like exotic birds of prey, practising in the tops of trees.

Watching the Knitting challenge show - and they’re using chunky wool and large needles, I suppose in part to make the challenges feasible in the tight TV timeframe. And it reminds me of playing Nintendo GoldenEye on the easy setting where the heads were hugely oversized.

A front door in Cambridge. The layers of paint on the sill - rhubarb, custard, a brilliant blue - hint at the door’s more exciting, even revolutionary, past. This was once a door that was going places.

At the barbers this morning and they were doing the crossword - one chap shouting out the clues. Now on a bus and the couple, top deck, front seats, are doing a crossword. It’s like there’s been an alien body swap invasion, and the only thing they know about the human race is that we do crosswords

They’ve fallen asleep in a manner that makes it seem one cat is dreaming of the other.

Oh. I’m nearer now and he’s blowing single fog horn notes. The sun is at the horizon, and there’s a fog warning coming from round the corner on the little lane that links Sewards End to Thaxted Road. Oh, things can be wonderful at times.

Ok, this is magic. As the music fades away on my headphones, and I come off the field edge and onto a farm road, I can just hear the saxophonist who practises on a rural lane near here. I happened upon him last year and took his photo. But that was summer, and this time the world is yellow and gold.

Now listening: Hounds of Love. Which shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s a favourite album. But so precious is it that I’d sealed it away; perhaps only one full listen in the last 15 years. So I downloaded it. And for the first time ever I am listening to The Big Sky whilst walking under a big sky.

watching this morning over coffee. It actually moves me to tears a little - both the boundless creativity and the sincerity of it. People love to create if the opportunity arises.

Luckily I’m a very dull boyfriend who mainly talks about his back pain, as I’ve two message apps currently open, one to my neighbour whose cats I’m feeding, and one to Bridget - and I keep sending the wrong messages to the wrong person.

My father documenting my mother, with his eye for the absurd. I like that while my mother’s face is cropped out by the mirror, she is all there in her Peter Pan shadow.

I wanted to take a shot to show how time has passed as the moon is now directly behind the church spire ( I, on the other hand, have not moved), but didn’t expect this particle accelerator plot! 😍

holy shit @clppng.bsky.social tiny desk is out!! youtu.be/h0-k7vW9Xek 🔥

Evening walk, again past the miniature railway, on its last night of ghost trains. In the dark I stepped into a rabbit hole and went over, knees buckled, and ankle dangerously near twisting. If I had injured myself the only help would have been parents and children dressed as witches and monsters

Last week I posted that the image on the left was one of the single greatest pages in twentieth century literature, and I stand by that! But look what I noticed for the very first time: Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are closes with an almost-identical page layout, to wildly different ends

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want Yeah tell me what you want, what you really really want I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want I really really want you to look on my works ye mighty and despair (Ozymandias in the text for people who are muting)

While she is away on holiday I'm feeding the neighbour's cats. Overnight one of those cats, known only to the authorities as 'Tiffin', using nothing more than a fireman's ladder and a buzzsaw, snared a food punch out of high cupboard and opened it on the floor. She ate all the gems within.

The Haves and the Have Nots this evening. Lucia hoping that trickle down economics will see some warm lap and fuss later on.

Out and about with my Death Beam.

At the supermarket. A young boy (with his father) looking sadly at an empty sushi fridge (too early. Nothing is ready). The boy is wearing a furry hat with nose and ears; the boy is a bear. He is a bear looking for fish and finding the river empty. It’s too early in the season for the salmon run.

This is just scratching a visual itch. The sudden reveal of nature / the colour green in European cinema - the magical edit in Švankmajer's Faust reminded me of the reveal of the graveyard (the only calm in the whole film) in Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired a Contract Killer.

One last clip (I don’t wish to spoil all the delights, but this effect took my breath away). The marionette Faust, having run the marionette Devil ragged with a manic succession of calling and expelling, departs the stage in the eeriest, most magical way possible. Simply wonderous.

Now watching Jan Švankmajer’s Lekce Faust, and I love the detail where, after a flutter of stop motion, puppetry and simple clever practical effects, Faust decides he’d probably best sit down - this sounds like it’s gonna be a speech.

WhatsApp call with @bugshaw.bsky.social this morning, a few moments after she realised she was calling as Eraserhead and I noticed I was answering as Barton Fink. (Bridget has just had a super-duper new haircut from @rosyrockets.bsky.social, while I need a haircut) (posted with permission)

Seems the fallen leaves, which I swept into a pile yesterday, has gained sentience overnight. It’s now emitting a low hum of hunger, and moving about the gardens like a worry from a John Wyndham story.

The editing! Such sublime editing! The cuts from the real world to the models! the cut to the thunder sheet! I wonder if somebody like Scorsese (and Thelma Schoonmaker) ever look to this style of filming to see how abstract the grammar can be and still flow as a story.

A dog just got into our row of half hidden cottage gardens. The dog just wanted to play - a sudden Valhalla of leaf piles, a Brigadoon of open back doors, a Shangri-La of smells and scents, and six cats who suddenly realised the world was round and contained dogs.

Walking past the gates of the miniature railway. A family leaving, their child so exhausted by the Hallowe’en train that they are fast asleep, held horizontally in the hammock of their father’s arms. And the child is dressed head to toe as a lion, the tail swinging gently, like a lion pendulum.

Hide and Seek, painted by Tirzah Garwood in 1950 (as she dealt with her illness) What an extraordinary painting. The seeker seems lost and in danger; the hiders seem menacing, and discovering them is rather chilling. The chimney smoke the only grown up. It’s a Val Lewton remake of Petite Maman.

Zero calories, despite 3 cups of apples stewed in sugar and rum. Wait…the zero calories only count if you both bake and eat the cake in the extra hour. Outside that hour normal calories rules apply.

Spent to extra hour baking a spiced apple cake, science having now demonstrated that any cakes baked in that unearthly hour contain no calories.

It seems that are shiny fairy snares in many of the charity shops. As I picked this up a small spider ran away to hide behind a paperback about the moon.