The Nervous System

I went to the Royal Academy to see the new exhibition Francis Bacon: Man And Beast. Outside, Bacon and Reynolds together: The work that caused shock and upset when presented in a small gallery in 1944, is now familiar enough to be used as the branding of a mass-reproduced product (of course this red version […]

Viscous Light

I read After The Sun by Jonas Eika. The book is divided in to 5 titled sections that can be taken as short stories. The second and fifth sections are both entitled “Bad Mexican Dog” are two parts of the same narrative. Other than that there are no common characters or locations. The time of […]

Selenite Rhizome

I watched The Silent Sea on Netflix. This a Korean sci-fi series in 8 episodes, dubbed into English. The story is set at some unspecified point in the future, which would seem to be in the 22nd century or not too far away from it. Humans have advanced to creating bases on the Moon and […]

The Book Of Gideon

I’ve been watching the complete run of Gideon’s Way from 1965-66. The show was based on stories about the C.I.D. Commander George Gideon and his campaigns against crime in London, from the headquarters of Scotland Yard. The original Gideon stories were by John Creasey and are credited as source, unless the scripts are original in […]

Freaks And Geeks

I went to see Nightmare Alley at the Ritzy in Brixton. I went to the midday screening, with subtitling for the hard-of-hearing. That was helpful as I can’t always follow what American actors are saying. I sat at the front of the auditorium and was in fact the only person watching. It will be a […]

New Illustrators

I went to South London Gallery in Peckham to see the latest shows that are on there. Please note: In the Old Fire Station part of the gallery I looked in the Archive Room at the Shut The Club Down exhibition. Note the reuse of the cover image of the 70s Panther edition of The […]

A Strong Sweet Smell Of Incense

I went in to the centre of London for the first time this year. Mask-wearing on the Tube was up to 90-95%, the strongest showing in all 2 years. I went to Whitechapel Gallery to see the new Galleries In The Groove exhibition. This shows artefacts from 3 galleries and art dealers who were influential […]

Shards

I watched Coma (2019). This is like a Russian version of The Matrix and derivative films, but superior in many ways. An American-dubbed version is available on Amazon Prime. It starts with a fantastic cityscape growing before us, like a mega-sized version of Dubai orother modern towers of capital. But then the image distorts and […]

The Lonely Dreamers

Last year I noticed this article in the TLS, and also this one next to it. I was very struck by this passage: And so I got a copy of Dante Called You Beatrice to find out what this “useless no-good, a bum, a loafer, and a cad” had to say for himself. The first […]

The Rapture

Over Christmas I read Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli. This is a story about a man who finds he is suddenly the only person alive in the world. The book commences with the narrator surveying the offices of the newspaper where he used to work years earlier, as he explores the now-deserted world. What initially […]