Clothkits games tablecloth.

Nope! Get those books (the classics, the *should reads*) out of the library. Go to bookshops and surprise yourself. If we all only read classics, there would be no more future classics.

Elementary Forms: Vertical-Horizontal Composition, embroidered in wool on canvas (1917) by Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Start your day with this refreshing @theguardian.com country diary by @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social. #countrydiary #naturewriting

Fond memories of this. I’d forgotten the Lynch connection. At the time I was much more of a Hal Hartley fan, so this movie was catnip.

@kevinboniface.bsky.social?

Three hours. Three stars. At least onr of those for Laura Dern, who does for Lynch what no actress would ever have done for Hitchcock. (The 21yo did *not* like it.) boxd.it/cI7Onl

So the German name for chaffinch is Buchfink (bookfinch). Anyone know why this might be? Is it pure coincidence?

The first of two Lynch films I’m watching with 21yo son at the BFI this weekend. We were one of three father-son pairs that i could see in NFT3. It’s obviously a vibe. Tomorrow, for a bit of a contrast, is Inland Empire. boxd.it/cGTwTr

The first of two Lynch films I’m watching with 21yo son at the BFI this weekend. We were one of three father-son pairs that i could see in NFT3. It’s obviously a vibe. Tomorrow, for a bit of a contrast, is Inland Empire. boxd.it/cGTwTr

Look, just give him one of the king’s spare decoy crowns. That seems to do the trick.

With some time on my hands I’ve finally got around to playing this weird LP I own: Listen With(out) Piano, a companion piece to Alexis Taylor’s solo album Piano. It’s an ‘overdub’ record by various artists to play alongside Piano, which I’m playing from my phone on a smart speaker.

I've updated the apersonalanthology.com website with @polyscribe70.bsky.social Mike Fox's tremendous pick of a dozen favourite short stories. Check them out here, along with over 3,000 other short story recommendations! Featuring a Personal Anthology debut for David Bevan, so congrats to him.

The play starts in three minutes, so here come all the people with seats in the middle of a row. That they chos and booked.

Watched Barton Fink last night for the first time since release. Got me thinking how much I'd like to rewatch Steve Buscemi's 1996 Trees Lounge. Anyone watched that recently?

I appear to have bought a tumble dryer with wifi connectivity. This is not the future we were promised. That said, if we’d ended up with jet packs, they’d probably run on AI and be self-driving and we wouldn’t want to use them anyway.

Morning

Oh well. I watched this for the first time since release, and I feel like the Coens were still learning, still trying to make bigger movies than they had the budget, or the skills, to make. Great fun, at many moments, but not quite clever enough to pull off its thematic gambit. boxd.it/cFM0u7

Newspapers are for men. Magazines are for women. (Apart from one magazine, I note. Interesting to see that it’s there at all, really.)

Radio 3 Unwind is the chattering classes’ equivalent of Paddington walking you into the sunset.

Trying to read Andrew O’Hagan on Walter Lipmann and American journalism and all I can think is suck my dick, lick my balls, and make me a fucking sandwich.

The #totp hashtag drifts into my mentions on a Friday night and seeing as I’m in alone I thought I’d sit down with my lentil and spinach curry to watch it, and… Jesus. I guess I wasn’t watching Top of the Pops in the 90s but this is all shite.

Just worked my way to the weekend with Artur, as is traditional, and indeed recommended. Remember: they’re not Ballades; they’re Bad Lads!

There is a precedent for a person getting someone else's Nobel Prize. In 1943, the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, gave his Nobel Prize in literature to Joseph Goebbels uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...

I feel like I haven't drawn in awhile. here's a quiet morning moment or whatever

And off it goes, Mike Fox’s Personal Anthology, stooping at the bathroom sink in stripy pyjamas to wash, filling its smelly pipe with minute pinches of tobacco from a pouch in its cracked sheepskin waistcoat, going through the moor gate and following the path along the drainage dyke...

My best reads of 2025 roundup list for them as wants it: pechorinsjournal.wordpress.com/2026/01/16/b...

Hey, cool cats! This is to let you know that A Personal Anthology is back, baby! Yes: back! Back! BACK! Today's anthology features a dozen favourite short stories picked and introduced by Mike Fox (@polyscribe70.bsky.social), and hits inboxes at 2pm. Sign up here, and RT if you already subscribe!

I took out a big pile of library books pre Christmas to try and get myself out of a slump. Now down to 1 left to read and gave most of them back today. Here are my thoughts on each:

I mean, this is good news, but the tone (high puffy) and competence (low) of this press release makes me despair. There are infelicities in all three pars, but the middle one makes me despair. “The health service will take learnings”?🧐 And then “take the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS”🤮

Two recent reads, that helped me with a January cold. Secondly, The Safekeep by Yael van den Wouden. It's a solid novel, but I found aspects of it annoying – very possibly because I'd just read two student essays on it, so approached it as much as a lecturer as a reader, with an eye on technique.

Heard a lad earlier talking about ‘Belgian whistles’ “A basic website costs 10k or 25k upwards if you want all the Belgian whistles” BELGIAN WHISTLES

Two recent reads, that have helped me with a January cold. First up, my uni colleague and friend Joe Thomas’s conclusion to his United Kingdom trilogy of bent cops-‘n’-good music social history of 70s-90s east London.

"You see the life I've had/Would make a good man turn bad." In retrospect, quite an interesting lyric.

why do people renew their wedding vows when they could be renegotiating them? you know, haggle them down from “love, honour and obey” to “like, accept and take into consideration”

In the future, everyone will be Warrington for 15 minutes

I started haunting bookstores around 1973, when I bought books with lawn mowing money, so I concentrated on the paperback section. And back in the days before trade paperbacks, I was well served. Here are a few examples I've been toting around for over 50 years.

My new blog on the Beth Chatto Gardens' website looks at the importance of the Chattowood front garden planting for insects, surely a model for any new housing developments? www.bethchatto.co.uk/discover/our...

Did anyone else have this poster on their bedroom wall growing up? "Chalk Grassland." This was basically one of the gateway drugs into botany- not only the plants but importantly they communities they grew in. I loved this poster & it still lives vividly in my imagination. @bsbibotany.bsky.social

Fritzi Ritz By Ernie Bushmiller January 12,1933

Got my Reform gizza vote nonsense. Filled out my reply (they don't deserve even vaguely legible handwriting) and will send it back so they pay their freepost. Least I could do.

Favourite Bowie 10, usual caveats Always Crashing in the Same Car Everyone Says Hi Wild is the Wind Station to Station Sound and Vision Joe the Lion Subterraneans Moss Garden “Heroes” Up the Hill Backwards

The technically all wrong, yet experientially just right perspective reminded me of this painting by Mary Lorraine, created in 1967 in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital where she was compelled to live. One of almost 70 surviving works depicting scenes from her life inside & out of hospital

I have to say, RadMac reading out the eBay description of a half-broken Mousetrap game with Mark E. Smith cadences-ah just about fits my mood today.

lots more puffin club issues & ephemera at my granny’s house @regretteruane.bsky.social

@gralefrit.bsky.social I’ve been stupid and lazy and missed out on tickets for the sold-out Candidate gig. I hope you take that as encouragement to play again soon!

One of the best films of the 1980s – See Miloš Forman's masterpiece AMADEUS : DIRECTOR'S CUT, showcasing the life, success & troubles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as told by jealous composer Antonio Salieri – showing next Wed 14th Jan at 2:20pm! 🎟️: buff.ly/aLdnw2w

“It’s just you. And me.” “I’ve got to get to him before he gets to me.” “Make. The call.” Thank you, Radio 4 AND 6Music, for *regularly* reminding me how lame the Night Manager script is, and how unsexy Tom Hiddlestone’s voice surely is.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The best bits of Thurston Moore/Sonic Youth are when he’s not singing, but I wouldn’t have them as instrumentals.

it’s come to my attention that my tumblr post has been crossposted to bluesky, so I’m posting it on my account here #AntiAI #GenAI