The Scenic Railway

We went to have a look at the new Elizabeth Line. Took the District Line out to Ealing Broadway. The train to Paddington arrived at Platform 4. We travelled in 5 minutes to Paddington, not stopping at Acton. We got out, went through the turnstiles, and followed the signs across to the Eastbound platforms. Since […]

Terms Of Psychic Warfare

I have been watching the new series of Stranger Things on Netflix. I knew about Stranger Things when it started back in 2016, but I only took a subscription to Netflix last year. It turns out I waited until it was going out of fashion, which is fine. First of all I wanted to see […]

The Splendour Of Fear

Last year I read the 3 novels by Sara Gran about the detective Claire DeWitt, and now I have read all her other novels. There is also an audiobook Marigold which I have not heard yet. The characters in these books are similar to Claire and her friends in their uncertain backgrounds; if they had […]

Gummo And Zeppo

I watched Ironweed, the 1987 film adaptation of the novel by William Kennedy. Despite having a starry cast headed by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep and including Tom Waits, the film didn’t do well at the time. This is a great shame as it has Nicholson’s last great performance before he did Batman and coasted […]

Pharmacopoeia

We went to The Old Operating Theatre near London Bridge. The Borough market was very busy and now large numbers of tourists are back in London. The Museum is located above a busy bar and we could hear pop-disco tunes vibrating up the walls. Entry is through a spiral staircase, with a traffic light system […]

The Airborne Toxic Event

I watched Station Eleven. I do not think it is any good, but we’ll come to that later. Here is what it is about. The story begins in Chicago. We find out we are on the eve of the outbreak of a deadly flu pandemic that will kill most of the world’s population. Although dates […]

The Mortgaged Heart

I finally read my hardback copy of My Autobiography Of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland, which coincidentally is now published in paperback. I discovered Carson McCullers’s books in my school library. They did not have any, but she was a name in the back pages of the Penguin Modern Classics editions of William Faulkner’s novels. […]

Masks Off

Most of the lockdown decorations have disappeared now – our nearest big Post Office has erased the socially distanced positions for queuing customers, though they were being ignored for a long time in advance. I should say mask-wearing is now down to no more than 5% on any Tube or buses I use, and not […]