Disappointed to discover that the DVD of Michael Powell’s film for television ‘Frantick Rebel’ (1964) is eyewateringly expensive. Who wouldn’t want to Stanley Baxter and Roger Livesey starring as Boswell & Johnson investigating a Quaker (Jill Bennett) suspected of spying for the American rebels?

BlueSky historians of door furniture - do you think this handle on one of the south doors of St Martin-in-the Fields dates to 1726 when Gibbs’s building was completed, or is of a later date?

God speed you tiny aubergine.

Drop a film that traumatised you as a child

@stevemarsdin.bsky.social Morning Steve. I wonder whether you managed to see a post I wrote last week about a painting that my daughter has introduced into the Tate collection. It’s of a mysterious structure built by the Admiralty on the Sussex coast at the end of WWI but I suspect not commissioned

Brockwell Park.

Today’s patient task: disentangling a honeysuckle.

Put the year you were born in the gif bar and see what was popular back then.

I have made a Spring Equinox pie.

A local cat and its sushi.

Show someone who absolutely rocks a hat (who isn’t Indiana Jones)

An elderly gentleman of my acquaintance had a teensy bit too much wine today, fell over and started speaking in Italian. He then transferred to French and finally spoke in reasonably accurate German. It was most peculiar.

This painting by Ida Lees went on display at Tate Britain for the first time this morning, its instillation overseen by @irmuir.bsky.social , who also wrote what’s known about it. ‘Mysterious Tower’ was constructed by the Admiralty at the end of WW1 for mysterious defensive purposes.

Pollarded plane trees behind Tate Britain.

Len Deighton was the first guest on the first episode of Book Four on the first night of C4. He didn’t want a fee, he just wanted us to take him out for lunch. He was delightful but I was massively bollocked for the spend by the Head of something or other at LWT @tonyknox.bsky.social chose grouse 💪

For Series 3, ep 3 of A History of Britain, back now on IPlayer, I recreated the Lucknow Residency at the height of the Indian Rebellion in the basement of my sister’s house in Bath. At the start of the sequence you can just glimpse her central heating pipes. #SmokeandMirrors

A History of Britain is back on IPlayer. In Series 3, ep. 1 Caroline portrays late 18th c. attitudes to breastfeeding, my daughter Anna & best friend Katy enact Rousseau’s ideas about childhood, Isobel is Poor Girl Picking Up Sticks, my nephew Gabriel is the young Wordsworth, and I am Man in Wig.

The Port-en-Bessin postie, by Seurat.

Post your favourite final shot in film.

Impromptu jerk chicken stop outside what used to be The Fridge on Brixton Hill last night.

I can’t begin to describe how delicious this is.

Wystan in the age of mechanical reproduction.

The titles music for Travels with Pevsner, enjoying a repeat on BBC4, is an ‘immature poets imitate, mature poets steal’ homage to Tull’s Living in the Past cooked up by composer Orlando Gough and me.

I was just hurrying across at Kennington from the City branch of the Northern Line to the Charing Cross branch when the doors of the train in front me closed. In frustration I yelled out ‘oh for f**k’s sake!’ - and the doors opened! I’m a Train Whisperer and am going to pass my advice to tourists

Instead of mending the broken indicator, it has been removed it altogether. The stops on Brixton Rd just along from the Tube are an important hub for the people who keep London going, the exhausted office cleaners and refuse collectors who would like to know when their bus home is due. Shameful,TFL.

The house that wept paint: yet another Brixton pavement short story. @douglascheape.bsky.social @hassinator.bsky.social @regretteruane.bsky.social @jamesbarr.bsky.social

Kennington’s fennel forest.

No cheating, your last saved picture of a celebrity is your therapist.

Oh no! The foxes off Acre Lane have taken up plumbing.

10 random favourite bands/artists to get to know me Unit 4 + 2 The Small Faces Family Pentangle Kevin Ayers and The Whole World The Skatalites The Slits The Adverts St Etienne Tame Impala

A pub in Leyton doubling as a showroom for William Morris wallpapers.

The house in Leyton E10 where my father lived from 1932 to 1949. #Pilgrimage

Tremendous garden door in Leytonstone

A wonderful mosaic of North By Northwest in the Tube station of Hitchcock’s home town of Leytonstone in north by northeast London.

The campest fashion term ever for an item of men’s clothing must be ‘chore jacket.’

Yet another short story from the pavements: dump us this day our daily bread.

Working from home.

For thirty years I bought dry roasted peanuts from Piyush to fuel my walk back up Brixton Hill. A rapacious rent increase has forced him out of business to be replaced by - what? - a souless unit flogging burnt coffee and sandwiches with a high faecal content.

Junction boxes in rural churches (1).

Is Florence Welch the first pop star to have researched themes for her songs in the library of the Warburg Institute?

This Is Tomorrow: a small parade of shops at Newington Butts glimpsed from the 133.

The skaters undercroft could do with a lick of paint. It’s got graffiti all over it.

A garage off Brixton Hill to brighten up your day.

Introduce yourself with 5 concerts you’ve seen with WOMEN lead singers: The Slits X-ray Spex Patti Smith St Etienne Florence and the Machine

The trend lines are down. I have just seen someone with a Sir John Soane Museum tote bag going into the KFC at the top of Atlantic Rd in Brixton.

An un-ironic pineapple hedgehog at the closing down sale of a chazzer on Queen’s Town Rd, Battersea + 2 packets of unopened tights from the 1970s.

Ralph Fiennes dancing to Iron Maiden’s ‘Number of the Beast’ enters the pantheon of great dance sequences on film: John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, JT again with Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, Anna Karina and mecs in Bande à Part, Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain, all Busby Berkeley’s routines.

The Shard from Brixton Hill (contrast fiddled with).

‘The HOPPING MATCH on CLAPHAM COMMON. JACKSON, the Runner exhibiting his Agility.’ H/t Lambeth Archives timeline of life in Lambeth in the window of their offices on Brixton Hill..