A lip-smacking list of films that may premiere at the Venice FF led by Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning.

At The Boathouse on the edge of Bath.

The Utopia Strong tonight at the Castle Inn, Luton. Excellent.

Reading about the welcome forthcoming release of the uncut version of Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ and working out that I must have been 14 (and looked it) when I walked into a cinema to see this highly controversial X film on first release.

Kenneth Lonergan is back.

First morning back from #interrail26 and the garden is full of life - fledgling starlings, magpie, jackdaw, great tit, blackbird, black squirrel, wood pigeon, robin. No sign of swifts having returned yet, but fingers crossed.

And so the ghost of Patrick Gordon Walker returns to haunt Labour. I’m just about old enough to remember the shock of his losing when a constituency vacancy was created for him.

I agree.

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First beer of #Interrail26 - quality beer and glasses on a DB train travelling to Berlin.

I have already today seen a man at WH Smith in Kings Cross wearing an Isambard Kingdom Brunel style hat. He was much taller than Brunel.

I’ve watched the whole of The Pitt season 1 and pretty sure I didn’t once hear anyone suggest a ‘CBC Chem 7 IV Push’, unlike in ER where it was the diagnostic treatment of choice.

One of the greatest of all production designers. Picture the streets of old Little Italy, Fredo and Michael in Cuba, the Tahoe lake house in Godfather Part II. Not to mention a dozen other Coppola films, and, of course, Bonnie and Clyde. RIP Dean Tavoularis. www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

Pakistani bridal dowries now routinely include four panels, an inverter and a battery: billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-... This is an inversion of the normal order, in which rich countries get all the good stuff first, and countries like Pakistan get scraps after we've gorged ourselves. 9/

Decent crowd at Chelmsford for the County Championship match v Somerset. Essex 14/1.

The Necks at Café Oto, being great as usual.

The modern world in old Ladybird books. The dawn of the supermarket (1968) Artist: Frank Hampson ‘Through the ages: Food’

A unicorn (hornless variety) blocked my path on this afternoon’s walk.

There are now 10 toilets in Space International Space Station: 4 Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1 Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1 Tiangong Space Station: 2 Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1 Artemis II on way around Moon: 1 This will be the first time a toilet has left low earth orbit!

This week, Brexit finally killed our family business. We cleared out our warehouse, handed back the keys, paid the final bills and said goodbye to our last employee. What was once a thriving firm died a slow, sad death, all thanks to Farage, Johnson and the gullible idiots they conned. 1/18

Scrolled the launch back (which is in itself an astonishing thing to be able to do) to record this camera angle - which looks a Victorian seance, Kirlian photography, iron filings dancing to heavy metal, and a ladder of vibrations into space. Just amazingly beautiful.

Differences between Artemis and Apollo. No 6 in an irregular series. An eighth of the two hour launch window is unusable because of the number of satellites in low Earth orbit.

A very late 60s feeling right now. #Artemis

A disgruntled, pissed England fan on the train home from Wembley tonight - ‘I’m not sure I want England to win the World Cup. We’d have to live with pictures of Trump holding the trophy with the team for ever.”

RIP Chip Taylor, who wrote ‘Wild Thing’, recorded by The Troggs in 1966. It rewired by nine year old brain.

Tonight’s gig venue - St Pancras Old Church. Polly Paulusma playing. Percy Shelley and the future Mary Shelley planned their elopement in the graveyard, meeting at her mother’s (Mary Wollstonecraft of course) tomb.

#5Debutalbums1519. Swedish band Isildur’s Bane joined forces with Peter Hammill in 2019 to release the excellent ‘In Amazonia’ - the song ‘Aguirre’ is one of the strongest in Hammill’s recent canon. There was a follow up in 2021.

RIP Len Deighton. ‘Bomber’ was one of great reads of my teenage years.

Why have I only just found out that Henry Now’s live album from Piacenza and Palermo in 2022 has been released?! Cutler / Frith / Greaves / Hodgkinson. darkcompanionrecords.bandcamp.com/album/then-a...

We have been gifted some Lord of the Rings tea towels from New Zealand. Reluctant to use them!

RIP Kenith Trodd, one of the great TV producers.

Also yesterday, two parakeets turned up in the garden. Are these harbingers of a larger, possibly disruptive flock?

On the train yesterday, my wife was physically writing a letter and I was reading a print newspaper. A woman got on, sat across from us, and opened a book. She realises the situation and wonders if this will ever be seen again.

EXCLUSIVE: At more than 30 installations, U.S. commanders told troops the war on Iran is a Christian war. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been “inundated” with more than 110 complaints. One NCO said they were told the U.S. war is to bring about Armageddon and the return of Jesus…

Farewell to Dan Simmons who, somehow, in one year, 1989, managed to publish masterpieces in three different fields - SF, mainstream fiction and horror. I read them all that year and it was astonishing.

The first woman in Parliament to appear in the Guardian's 'best-dressed at Glastonbury' feature. You'll never sing that, etc...

Well, that’s good news to wake up to in all sorts of ways.

I don’t often go to gigs where I’m reminded of Bish Bosch era Scott Walker, but feeo managed it tonight at the ICA. Excellent.

Great news tonight from Eliza Carthy that The Imagined Village are reforming.

The Martin Carthy gig without him at Cecil Sharp House tonight was a huge celebration and he was very present despite not being there. Stellar stuff from Eliza Carthy, Nick Hart, Angeline Morrison, Graham Coxon, Jon Wilks, Gwena Harman and Rowan Gatherer (Goblin Band) and Finn Curran-Carthy.

Whoa. “This vaccine, what we term a universal vaccine, elicits a far broader response that is protective against not just the flu virus, not just the Covid virus, not just the common cold virus, but against virtually all viruses, and as many different bacteria as we've tested, and even allergens.”

Henley-on-Thames very much ‘on Thames’ today.

This is turning out to be a very bad day for cinema.

#5debutalbums0509 has given me an excuse to listen again to Bodies of Water’s ‘Ears Will Pop and Eyes Will Blink’ and what a pleasure it still is.

Terrifically niche Severance inspired sticker seen on a toilet cistern today when Dagenham and Redbridge played at home v Bath City (who play at Twerton Park).

Just heard on BBC News at Ten that Epstein spent £50 in a fish and chip shop in Luton.

First visit to the Bazalgette Embankment at Blackfriars. A bit cold and rainy today (and a rare sighting of dog shit) but you can see the promise as a public space.

Have had cause to look up the first use of the word ‘shedloads’ and surprised to find it was as recently as 1989 by the Nottingham Evening Post, according to the OED.

At Benington Lordship in Hertfordshire for its snowdrop festival. Also, its Norman keep.