Go! Go! Go! to Enthusiastic But Mediocre where you will find me getting into a FITE with some European pop music from the land of the Moomins.[…]

The Chatwin Hotel
Bruce Chatwin’s name has cropped up a couple of times among the travel posts. This pleases me. I’ve been a devotee for years and once formed part of the clich’d Chatwin Traveller set, hitchhiking around South Ameri[…]

Best Quiz Machine In World Found
It’s in well-known Freaky Trigger stamping ground the Blue Posts on Newman Street, never in general an exciting pub but a very robust one that has played host to all sorts of shenanigans. In the corner stands it[…]

In the fullness of time (ie after I’ve finished reading the whole book) I will write a (probably very favourable) review of Planet Simpson. However, possibly in the style of Comic Book Guy, I have to Report Back straight away on a howler of an[…]

But can Noam Chomsky play jazz flute?[…]

Fear of Flying
As the aircraft lifted into the afternoon skies, I craned my neck to see Miami below. I had bagsied the window seat ahead of my sister. She sulked as a ten-year-old does. At two years her senior I was entitled to the privilege. Despite[…]

Moominvalley In November
Have you ever been on your own in a hotel? A big hotel, a hundred rooms – and no other guests but you?
We arrived in Bialowieza on a Tuesday, to stay four nights. It was early November, the night came on early and the v[…]

Tiny Lives
Do you remember autobiographical comics? What – they’re still going? I wouldn’t know. I stopped reading them, oh, four, five years ago. Weirdly enough it was around the time I started reading weblogs – now isn&#8217[…]

FT Top 100 Films
27: JAWS
There are probably a lot of people of my generation who have never seen Jaws. It was true of me until a couple of years ago. It was a horror movie after all, a bloody shark slasher, so it was always on TV too late for me to […]

Alone in the crowd (for once) — it was interesting, finally seeing Mike Judge’s Office Space for the first time the other week, and I actually talk more about my reaction to the film over on ILE. Here, though, I want to talk about somethi[…]