“The right for queer people to gather openly to be boring and discuss sandwiches is as fundamental to me as the right to dress as a horse and get ridden in a sex dungeon” - being boring is OK. Last share for this one, was lovely to be on paper at the weekend: observer.co.uk/style/featur...
If, like me, you’ve been a Pet Shop Boys fan ever since there were Pet Shop Boys, you might like this piece I wrote for the Quietus thequietus.com/opinion-and-...
Excellent - now it'd be good to see government limiting the profits allowable to old folks' homes.
Our elderly former neighbour is paying £9000 a month to stay in one and watching his life savings and the house he lived in for 60 years all disappear into the rapacious care home owner's pockets
joumana, dan, melvin, and mark talk about big finish's 8th doctor adventures, "empty vessels" at trapone.podbean.com
loved celebrating my 3rd anniversary of chatting about #doctorwho back where it all started. to wit, on the popular @trapone.bsky.social "doctor who" podcast, talking, as i did on that first occasion, about paul mcgann, nicola walker, and hattie morahan trapone.podbean.com/e/empty-vess...
Some collectors can’t stop ‘collecting’, I guess 🙄
I was appalled when I saw that the local Oxfam music has been forced to take the cartridge off their customer turntable as people keep nicking it…
Sir Gawain Fucks the Green Knight Here’s a tale ripe for telling. Can’t say where I heard it first—in pretty French or Dutch. Perhaps as a young lady walking ‘longside the Rijn. I’ll spin it for you in an English tongue, fine as frost on lace, sweet as malmsey wine. So it goes that young Gawain, strength kissed into his limbs, fresh as the bright dawn, comes trembling down to the Green Chapel. You’ve heard this tale, I know. His breath makes peach fuzz in the air, fear into him like worm to apple. Christmas Morn is too soon, time is short. You have your own life to save, he says, picking through thorn and bough to an ivy-clad cave. The creature is the Jack O’ the Glen / forest prince / the wood’s own laughter. Beard of lichen and eyes like dark elder. I need not repeat their exchange—my boy’s flinching heart—a songbird in a rattled cage. It is after the blows are dealt, he asks, what god is worshipped in these green trees? Boy, the Knight replies, boy, were you not just down on your knees? The Knight is the tang of sap / bark rough and petal soft / everywhere leaves scatter / easily crushed / Gawain clings / hardly knows what he clings to / he is the forest and the flower / a turmoil of roots / where god and tree meet and melt / the birch the oak the fern the deer / mushroom maggot crow / here Gawain is branch and bud / blow returned for blow
This is a sheer indulgence on my part, but it turns out I never actually shared the poem here, so:
🍃
"The world Pet Shop Boys evoked to me back then was less kitchen sink drama, more film noir... This was a gay underworld, unspoken and largely invisible." Thanks @grindrod.bsky.social for this wonderful essay on PSB, the suburbs & sexuality:
thequietus.com/opinion-and-...
“HIELANMAN'S UMBRELLA” should be a new law of journalism, which states that if AI generated photos are used in a news article, all reporting from that publication should be instantly distrusted.
BBC have - finally - got a live feed going covering the fire threatening Glasgow Central Station
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd...
Part of the Union Street facade has collapsed into the street.
📷 Glasgow by drone
Reddit screenshot from Glasgow thread. Bright flames rising out the side of a Victorian building.
Video screenshot from Reddit. Building is now a shell with flames visible in every window.
The roof has collapsed embers rise into the night sky.
The fire at Glasgow central station is utterly devastating. Shops, homes and our transport link to England are being wiped out.
I am amazed by the limited news coverage.
Not seen: A farmer with a boat and a bag of grain scrumpling up his plans and throwing them away in a tearful fit of defeated pique
Love is in the air at Edinburgh zoo. Pebbling marks the start of the breeding season for Gentoo penguins.
Kids at Edinburgh Children's Hospital Charity painted pebbles for the penguins to choose from and present to their mates.
there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for
Rod Serling is probably the coolest guy of the 20th century. Looked cool, sounded cool, fought Nazis, hated John Wayne, wrote the screenplay for Planet of the Apes. Honestly dunks all the hell over any male influencer guy.
On a breezy day in early spring, the wind tugs at a row of white sheets and bedding on a washing line set in a garden in front of a large white house
Breezy Day (1975)
Artist: Gerald Witcomb
My wife's prezzie to me from a charity shop. It's 12 different Doctors with Malcom Tucker from The Thick of It in the middle.
My hope is that the artist also did a Torchwood piece with a big picture of Spike from Buffy in middle.
Maybe WE are the Empty Vessels? 🤔😉
This was great fun to be a part of.
“Self-driving taxis safe” says self-writing article.
From the new Private Eye, out now.
I think I had a useful conversation with @ianzpotter.bsky.social at some point regarding what parts of the text appear where too…
My Once and Future read through kind of stalled after Witch — I think I’m gonna use the cutdown version as a reminder to continue (here’s the secondhand paperback I have of Sword complete with my scrappy pencil notes of which chapters are unique to the standalone 😁)
Thanks James. And I’m so sorry to hear your mum is also caught up in that sort of thing. It does often seem like every aspect of the institution has its own little inflexible rituals and they get furious if you don’t intuit them…
That would make sense. Anything else would make more sense
Anyway, it looks like I’m making a pointless delivery trip today…
Tremendous news. I've been in love with these daft old things ever since Douglas Adams introduced me to them in "Last Chance To See". Good to know that they're - if not exactly thriving - at least upping the population a wee bit.
I think if it’s called ‘the sword in the stone’ you get mostly the original text, including Mim, if it’s part of ‘once and future’ it’s the cut version…?
It’s the unedited book two (witch in the wood) that’s out of print entirely. (I got a US copy from eBay, surprisingly cheaply)
I haven’t actively used it for over a year. Keep meaning to delete it entirely.
Photo of a 'scratch & sniff' card for Hallé For Youth - Celebrating International Women's Day. There are 4 circles with an abstracts image with text: Ron Grainer & Delia Derbyshire - Doctor Who theme, Bizet - Carmen Suite, Price - Nimble Feet from Dances in the Canebrakes, Laura Shigihara - Grasswalk from Plants vs Zombies.
Daughter went on a school trip to a concert today. The theme was International Women's Day. The orchestra played 4 pieces of music which included the Doctor Who theme, crediting Delia Derbyshire alongside Ron Grainer. They had scratch & sniff cards for the - the smell of Doctor Who is burnt plastic!
Um, yes. That’s what I’m talking about? 😁 There’s a Twitter account called TOTP facts which posts anecdotes about the acts in synch with the BBC Four repeats
🧊NEW EPISODE!🧊
We're cool customers this week as we turn back the clock to 2013, and find out about how The Ice Warriors came to be animated, with the wonderful @nielbushnell.bsky.social and @chrischapman81.bsky.social.
soundcloud.com/powerof3pod/...
