For reasons I cannot quite fathom, but which instinctively feel like the correct path to follow as the Internet drags civilization into the abyss, I downloaded my Twitter history. This is a photo I took of Ely Cathedral in the spring of 2011

I really cannot recommend this excellent piece on Hammersmith Bridge highly enough

Reasons why Americans voted for Trump, number 978.

Looks like I can’t go and see Cliff Richard in concert in Bournemouth because my wife has a meeting in San Francisco about about building a house on the Moon. (This ridiculous sentence is totally true. Despite everything - not seeing Cliff, you thinking I’m a twat - I’m glad I can type it).

Right let’s get this nap properly underway.

Today's themes: HP Lovecraft, quail hunting, National Front environmental policy, Umwelt, litter-picking, Depression-era union bashing, hydroelecttic dams. This is going to be a fucking amazing book, guys.

Y’day, I went to Langer’s, the famous Jewish deli in MacArthur Park. Opened in 1947, it feels other-worldly - MacArthur Park is a challenging neighbourhood. Where LA does hold on to its past, it is often by accident or with indifference - but this felt defiant. I had pastrami on rye. It was good.

Ten quid for a Carpenters record. The horror, the horror.

Approaching Lille c/o Eurostar. Grey clouds overhead. Black clouds over Belgium.

Well it's not quite Costa but it'll have to do.

Hot Turkey at the Elvis Room

Though unlike some, when I’m arsing about on social media because I am bored, I don’t try to undermine the rule of law and trash democratic norms.

Clearly, I’m very very bored

I’ll probably have the salmon en croûte. I’ll drive, you can get a spritzer. I might have the Roquefort and olive bread starter as a dessert. No, it was Sheena Easton, I think.

Really enjoying this cassette. Smooth cover versions (lots of synths, lots of percussion) of various Bond themes by The London Studio Orchestra. A half-empty waterfront bistro, English south coast, one Wednesday lunchtime, September 1991 - this would be playing, quietly, polishing the background

Call it false consciousness if you will, but there was nothing false about those delightful donuts.

This sovereign self went for the donuts

A new instalment of INVENTORY is available now via the @backlisted.bsky.social Patreon. Sign up as a Locklistener today, learn about the greatest song you’ve probably never heard of, support the podcast. This week: Clearlake, ‘I Want to Live in a Dream’. www.patreon.com/backlisted

Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness, I'll love you with all the madness in my soul

Another new 2nd hand tape. Enjoying this. Frankie Goes To Hollywood were a strange & brilliant pop band: queer, scouse, ironic, shallow, apocalyptic, camp, performative, highly produced, messy, ridiculous, compelling. Both mainstream and conceptual art. Liverpool, Sex, Pop, War Sky scraping dove

I’m about to watch a film about Göring. Göring the Nazi, not the Sussex seaside hamlet Göring-by-Sea. I thïnk.

(‘He’s about to tell us about his dreams’ warning) Odd coincidence, last night I dreamt I visited Norwich with that man who was in the Communards who became a vicar. We were talking about the sexual energy of various English towns & cities & whether that energy works like a magnet for young people

Reading Margery Kempe by Robert Glück, which, so far, is very good and is also great fun. Marge and her lover, Jesus Christ, have just walked from King’s Lynn to Norwich. I also often find myself horny and metaphysical when visiting Norwich.

I like the Carry On films but the lore is too confusing, impossible for modern audiences to accept these people could play a major part in the French Revolution AND lose their bras on camping holidays

A radio programme like the Shipping Forecast but it’s called Bin Day and it just reads out every single council in the country’s bin schedule

I’ve seen a few extraordinary set designs; U2 at the Sphere, McCartney’s channeling of intense collective memory, all sorts of heavy metal tomfoolery. Rammstein on fire on the stage of the O2. This is better than all of those

Wings over the Capitol Building

Foolish commentator just said that Martin O’Neill last managed Celtic in Europe 21 years ago. It was 21 months ago. Obviously.

The day after the Dodger’s Downtown victory parade

The World Series did make me like the USA a bit more, there was quite a lot of the energy that Walt Whitman describes in his line about it being "America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere."

The brilliant World Series caught my imagination in such a way that I’m now watching the Ken Burns baseball doc. Someone just said that American civilization will be remembered for 3 things: The Constitution, jazz and baseball. Yes! Though he forgot In-N-Out Double-Double Burgers, diners & Elvis

Turns out my tv has a slight 3 second delay with the broadcast. I knew the Dodgers won, not because of Mookie Betts’ brilliant double play, but because of my neighbours cheering, and, weirdly, fireworks.

Qumram is crumbled in the desert sand marked only by the jackal's lonely lair and scurrying scorpions scramble over rocks where once some pious Essene stood in prayer. From the poem Ode to the Dead Sea Scrolls by Bernard Bresslaw

Day started with that modern mix of slight irritation & mild anxiety caused by order updates, delivery tracking, app updates & subscription reminders. Can I just remove myself from the Internet (he asked, on the Internet)? Don’t think so A negotiated ‘convenience vs endless anxiety’ deal

'And shall Trelawny live? Or shall Trelawny die!' A memorial in Bristol Cathedral to Jonathan Trelawny, 'who showed at a memorable period in the national history what Cornishmen can do'. Alfred Drury, 1888. Trelawny, Bishop of Bristol, fought against James II's 1688 Declaration of Indulgence. 1/3

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look upon my email which I hope finds you well.

Though hearing The Lady in Red, on cassette, in 2025, and thousands of miles away from where I am from, has all the tectonic plates shifting willy-nilly. Not that I ever liked the song, but you don’t want be pissing about with collective memory and (metaphorical) plate tectonics here in LA.

Now listening to my new 2nd hand Now 7 cassette. Lessons in Love followed by Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money) collapsed time and space and cast me adrift, lost amongst memory and immediacy. Only a trip to an American diner can drag your old chum back from the Proustian void.

I'm almost certain it was a Columbia thing for a while. I had this one pre-barcode, but my friend had one post

And, I thought, nice use of a barcode.I hoped that it was so large and intrusive because of some hip, ultra-modern, 1981-new-wave, design ethos, but barcodes in the music industry were a couple of years old by then. So it is just lazy & ugly. (But I’m generally on the side of the lazy & the ugly)

Another Amoeba cassette. Bought this for $1:99 and entirely on spec. No idea who they are, I just liked the band name Great Buildings and I liked the cover pic. It’s really great. Early 80s LA power pop. Band members Danny Wilde & Phil Solem went on to form The Rembrandts (of Friends fame)

Been down at the new @lookingforthemagic.bsky.social shop in Carshalton today - pricing records for Danny and helping prep for the big opening on Saturday. It’s going to be a truly great shop. The stock is amazing!

I also bought this 2nd hand tape in Amoeba y’day. Bursting Out was one of the first cassettes I bought, along with Ziggy S, in 1982. I didn’t buy my copy from John Menzies. But I identify with a Tull tape somehow finding its way from John Menzies to Hollywood & Vine. Dull details, slightly absurd

I like cloud nine a lot because: 1. in the ‘Rich 60s musician with home studio’ genre 2. Strong Lynne influence 3. Sets things up for Wilbury’s But mostly because it has that self-conscious quality that GH struggled to escape from: the quickest wit with a distance on most things, often himself.

Listening to the tapes I bought y’day in Amoeba. As usual, I mostly bought cassettes from the 80s (I’m in full biographical mode* at the moment). I like cloud nine a lot. *aka nostalgia, or very late mid-life crisis

What a gorgeous dust jacket.

Anyway, just keep roaming and rambling and following your footsteps. Or don’t.

Saw this twaddle on Facebook (everyone knows it was said by Albert Orwell). Asked various AI apps/ search engines where & when WG said it. Some replied there was no evidence he said it but it reflected his world view (whatever that means). A couple attributed it to him & then said he didn’t say it

Probable delete this in a bit. Near the Dodgers Stadium, a couple of hours before game 4 of The World Series