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 […]

Digital Retouching

I went to see the Seth Price show at Sadie Coles HQ gallery. This took me in to a zone of central London I haven’t seen too much of. I first of all went to Davies Street, and took a long time figuring out which unmarked door led in to the gallery. There I learned […]

The Family Reunion

I went to see the opening night of House Of Ife at Bush Theatre. It was also the night of QPR v Sheffield United at Loftus Rd and so crowds of jolly people could be seen going by outside, along with police vans and officers on horses. The play is performed in the main Holloway […]

Action At A Distance

I watched some sci-fi series on Netflix about spaceships contacting aliens later in the 21st century. Another Life (2019-21) starts with a well-off young woman seemingly bored in a well-maintained villa, which the subtitles locate in Westchester, New York. She is talking to a team of make-up artists and cameramen, ready to record her for […]

Antic Hay

We went to see the exhibition The 1920s: Beyond The Roar at the National Archives in Kew. This is more than simply a trot through the usual images of the Jazz Age etc. as it includes material from the 1921 Census now available. How the national biopower was logged and inscripted: We can see leaflets […]

Le Futur

I went to the South London Gallery to see the latest exhibits. In Gallery 1 is the work of Shamica Ruddock: On the wall: The guide: In Galleries 2 and 3, Celine Condorelli with Ben Rivers and Jay Bernard: Gallery 2: In Gallery 3: Upstairs again, the SLG130 Portfolio: There was also a video display […]

The Multiple Demand Network

We hired a car and drove away on Good Friday. I stopped at a garage to top up the fuel and found all the pumps were marked out of use. I went on to another garage where a few pumps were available though many others were marked out of use. I got petrol, and we […]

The Mother-In-Law Joke

I watched The Family Way, the 1966 film based on the play All In Good Time by Bill Naughton. The story is set entirely in a nameless industrial town somewhere in Lancashire (Bolton was used for location filming) over a period of about 3 months. The central characters are Arthur Fitton, played by Hywel Bennett, […]