A dimly lit room. A voice. A story that you know is going to give you bad dreams.
Robert Lloyd Parry returns to Levenshulme Old Library with A Pleasing Terror - an evening of MR James ghost stories performed live.
📅 Fri 20 March, 7.30pm
🎟️ Tickets limited
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-pleasing...
I've found myself listening to Neil Sedaka lately and wondering about his influence on Sparks, of all things. Pop songs with strong conceits, backing vocals arranged as a miniature vocal group, with all parts audibly performed by the lead singer, occasional earnest spoken word sections...?
£5 note - Pertwee
£10 note - Baker
£20 note - Tennant
£50 note - Capaldi saying 'the moon's an egg'
First frog of the season.
New podcast!
Absolutely loved putting this together - just unrelenting loveliness.
When I started planning a podcast talking to people about their migration stories, it felt like quite a gentle, sweet idea.
Now, one by-election's worth of rhetoric later, the risk assessment is a little longer!
This exchange has led me to Googling Claire Danes who is apparently now filming something for HBO with Winnie Holzman, which Holzman described as "not a [My So-Called Life] reboot in the traditional sense".
I guess there would need to be some vaguely plausible reason for the cast to come together.
I actually think Jordan's arc could look a bit like Leto's - can see him being a big Hollywood himbo desperate to be taken seriously, slinking back to his hometown fleeing multiple allegations.
I can actually imagine it opening at the funeral and everyone talking while they wait for Tino who, of course, never arrives.
This really is a very good interview with Self.
Not totally convinced he's not just Steve Pemberton doing a bit tbh
Nick Buckley's (quite long) concession video is actually fairly gracious in defeat/humiliation and seems to come v close to realising he may be part of the problem (obvs has since then gone back to being fully racist).
x.com/i/status/202...
Yes, lots of departed former guest vocalists. Hope Shaun Ryder is getting his annual check-up.
Nice bit of MES back from the grave on the new Gorillaz album, making me realise that that unnameable wrongness I've felt deep down in my being for the past nine years is probably because there's not been a new Fall album.
open.spotify.com/track/4uIXvy...
Just learned that Neil Sedaka reworked his most popular songs for young children with new lyrics in 2009, presumably for his grandchildren - finding the results quite sweet and oddly moving.
I think even late period Ballard might find the premise of a group of UK expat millionaire influencers living in Dubai trying to maintain their cosseted lifestyle while bombs begin to fall on their penthouses a bit on the nose.
"Interim Ayatollah" is pure The Fall.
Writing the Magic has been shortlisted for the BSFA Awards! Absolutely thrilled by this, our contributors wrote such fantastic essays. Link to the full shortlists below!
bsfa.co.uk/bsfa-awards-...
Anyway, time to kick back, switch on the news and see what I've missed over the past few hours.
Laura Elsworthy and Shobna Gulati were both incredible, as was Lucy Beaumont - slightly mental that she's not actually acted in anything professionally prior to this.
Managed to see Road tonight. I first read the play when I was about 14 and absolutely loved it - there was something magical about finding this weird, bracing work of art set in and about a v familiar Lancashire town - decades later I finally got to watch a performance.
Of just a post which says something like 'It is a Tuesday'.
I have a deep and unironic love of Neil Sedaka, the first concert I was taken to by my dad and the soundtrack to countless car journeys. I liked the upbeat pop songs but this was always my favorite - watching the M61 pass by in darkness, it sounded to me like one of the saddest songs ever written.
Waiting for a train in Lancaster.
I hear they make all the cronuts face Mecca in Long Bois and if you buy an IPA in the Talleyrand they make you says assalamualaikum instead of cheers.
Local election campaign is mere weeks away.
With the important exception of Ed Miliband, in many ways the patron saint of silly billies.
FWIW I think an undervalued aspect of the Green victory is... fun?
Hannah Spencer seemed quite funny and normal and to be actually enjoying herself. I can't really imagine anyone from any of the other parties in the mix doing this kind of silly billy business.
Whenever I saw a campaign photo like this I had flashbacks to working in retail in Preston and the absolute dread when the regional manager would come up from London and bollock us for having misinterpreted the window display documents.
A great day for magnanimous statements.
