Adrianne Lenker live with Big Thief manages to recall, at different moments, Janis Joplin, Margot Timmins and Jack Black. Wonderful to hear and watch. And Buck Meek is the most urbane of sidemen, stopping playing mid-song to reassemble one of James Krivchenia’s bashed-over cymbals.

'Proper English vibes' at the... ...oh yeah, at the Belle Vue Tavern.

my brain is tuned to the rhythm of prose

POV: you are a woman with great legs contemplating buying one of this season’s must-have books. (tbh I’m just happy that publishing had moved on from its Ali Smith-style cool 60s photo and sans serif font moment.)

Bought some old books.

What’s a Spanish writer who’s reasonably easy to read for someone living in Spain and learning Spanish?

#NowPlaying I’m reliving last night’s playful, often intense Moment’s Notice improv jazz session by listening to this piece of merch I picked up: the sole released LP thus far of a previous session. Tamar Osborn (sax, clarinet, flute), Yohannes Kebede (keyboards) and Will Glaser (drums).

creative process

Last night was my first experience of #Moment’sNotice, a monthly improv jazz session at AMP Studios on the Old Kent Road that programmes musicians who have never played together - curated by photographer George Nelson. Great venue, intimate like Cafe Oto, with benches and food outside.

2026 Reading 24: The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball. Hand-sold to my wife on a recent US trip (McNally Jackson, Brooklyn) as a gift for me, and I was pleased to receive it, having never actually read Ball – though weirdly I once brought back a Jesse Ball book from New York for my friend Philip Langeskov!

Well Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual is *not* going to be my next read. What starts out amusingly and playfully enough soon gets turgid. I have a colleague who reads this book once a year. However much I admire the premise, I’ve again failed at actually reading it.

This needed to be seen on a much bigger screen in a much fuller cinema. Where WERE you all? boxd.it/e0UAYP

Where I’m calling from.

£204 from my target. Yes, £2000 is a arbitrary goal. But still, we're talking about £204 worth of hospice care for people going through hell. So please give if you can. Plus, the more you give the faster I'll run, that's just science. www.justgiving.com/page/richard...

Awake early so sat in bed with a cup of tea and the LRB to read this long (12k-word) piece in which James Lasdun takes a road trip to investigate the US court system, sitting in state courts and talking to judges and staff. A fascinating reminder about how various American is beyond the headlines.

This needed to be seen on a much bigger screen in a much fuller cinema. Where WERE you all? boxd.it/e0UAYP

Listen up. I know it's been a while, but A Personal Anthology will anthologise tomorrow, like on a normal Friday. Tomorrow's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is Kimmo Rosenthal. Hitting inboxes 2pm. Sign up here to get it: apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

Listen up. I know it's been a while, but A Personal Anthology will anthologise tomorrow, like on a normal Friday. Tomorrow's guest editor, picking and introducing a dozen favourite short stories, is Kimmo Rosenthal. Hitting inboxes 2pm. Sign up here to get it: apersonalanthology.substack.com/about

*taps mic* Is this thing on?

I wrote about the piece on Ágota Kristóf in the new issue of the LRB: sonofabook.blogspot.com/2026/04/agot...

I've bought four pairs of Allbirds shoes. Very comfy. Shan't be buying any more. What a shame.

Ben Lerner’s new novel is so thin, and its dust jacket so black, that it looks like it takes up negative space. In fact it actually takes negative time to read. You sit down, open the covers, and by the time you’ve finished its 144 pages, it’s actually an hour earlier than when you started.

I’m still processing #Summerfolk at the National Theatre. It seems silly to say it’s not Chekhov: it knows precisely the degree to which it is and isn’t. Its faces the usual pluses and minuses of the Olivier stage – expansive moodsome staging, but a loss of intimacy only occasionally overcome.

Another one of those dreams that aren't 'recurring', but that present the events, to those in the dream, as a repeat of an earlier instance. This one involved trapping members of one rock band (The Who? The Stones?) in a hotel room with huge speakers playing (The Beatles?). As had been done before.

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

*walks into a classroom, grabs a chair, flips it around, sits down in it backwards facing the class*

And not ONE of you even thought to mention there was Beckett on BBC4 tonight?! www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

Big Thief tour opener in Oslo was absolutely bananas (complimentary). Adrianne played six new songs (?!), one a ‘90s riot grrrl thing, a protest song called ‘Mr Man’, and the most beautiful ballad to open. She was “vibrating with nerves”, apparently, but even by her standards she was sensational.

I did not know Epstein on a boat I did not know Epstein with a goat I did not know Epstein in the air I did not know him anywhere!

Just sitting here, working on the WIP, making myself cackle with laughter. The line? Why, yes. It was - "Mel *thought* she had been to Rome" if you need a cackle. (Maybe you had to be there.)

2026 Reading 23: The Importance of Music to Girls by Lavinia Greenlaw. A wonderful memoir in short essays, that focus on musical ‘episodes’ that act as lynchpins in the growth and formation of an English person in the 1970s. Not the specifics (first single, who was No. 1) , but their deeper meaning.

I'm sure Georges would have been delighted about these Banana chocolate pretzels named in his honour.

Penn and Teller and Reed and Cale and Tucker and Morrison. open.substack.com/pub/quantick...

There’s a proper grown-up film hiding inside this mildly mawkish British indie movie. boxd.it/dQSVQj

There’s a proper grown-up film hiding inside this mildly mawkish British indie movie. boxd.it/dQSVQj

Oh I thought of one, though they were never truly massive. Porridge Radio in the basement of a record shop in Deptford before Every Bad came out. 40-50 people. (Also saw their final London gig at Koko last year.)

First time I heard Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet was on Resonance FM as I was driving solo at night out of London into Essex after a news shift. During the song I started to go out of range of the radio transmitter so it disappeared into static and so I didn’t know what it was.

Main question in our household is how many books each the #ArtemisII astronauts are allowed to take with them.

‘Hunch’ would be a good name for a detective who always has really good hunches.

#TomStoppard was best known for writing for stage+screen, but the dramas he created for #radio were also a very important part of his career+development as a writer. John Yorke examines how he benefitted from+contributed to a golden age in #BBC Radio #drama:

finally, Wendell Berry's standards for technological innovation--truly as relevant now as they were in 1987 #othernetworks

I was today years old when I saw Raging Bull for the first time. boxd.it/dNwMC7

Easter Weekend is traditionally when I start to think about what I’ll read in the summer. This June I’m doing a week’s solo walking – a new thing for me – which raises the question: what ONE book would be good to shove in a rucksack and would last a week, poss with long evenings in the pub/hostel?

This is going straight into my MA Creative Writing slides, along with this classic from Twitter:

[reading a book in first person] i dont remember doing any of this

This is going to wreck havoc with a once useful analogy. “It’s a Marmite thing” used to mean an issue with two clear positions. Now it’ll be: - love it - hate it - hate that it’s sold out but still eat it guiltily - love it but have stopped eating it and hate people who still eat it - etc.

Small daughter (accusingly): Where have you been? Me: At work. SD: I thought you were wandering in the forest or something. Me: No I was… SD: But Mum said you were on campus. Me: That’s where I work. SD: No — a campus is like a watch and it tells you which way to go when you’re in the forest.

in the 'Zzone

Markin’ to Bartók