There’s only one teaching-related show worth the bother of turning the telly on right now, and it’s certainly not Teachers (sorry Alan). It’s Rule The School, which not even Children’s BBC seem to be making much of a noise abo[…]

(With apologies.)
1) It probably didn’t hurt that the room is air conditioned in this absurdly hot summer but I’ve loved being in and around Janet Cardiff’s Forty Part Motet more than anything else in the last few weeks. I don&#8217[…]

The Grave Maurice (on Whitechapel Road) is not what it was. Popping in there for a swift post-curry pint yesterday was a sorry experience. The barman was terrific and the people were friendly so it wasn’t actively nasty, but the place is fallin[…]

What a good idea: Smoke is a London fanzine. Not a fanzine about dodgy London pop music but a fanzine about London itself. Perhaps it has pretensions to be a literary magazine, but it neatly sidesteps them by billing itself as ‘A London Peculia[…]

Conduit right: I’m thinking that the Conduit Mandee links to below should perhaps be this Conduit, which I haven’t seen before but which looks at a cursory glance to be flash-heavy and fine.
I am attracted to the thought, though, that ea[…]

What’s worse than pushing your way through a knot of late-afternoon drunks spilling out of the pub and over the pavement? Being one of them.
Now I make no secret of my loathing for drinking out of doors. Sweating it out on stony pavements or u[…]

Nick Crowe – Getting On
It’s about slow-acting guilt. We wander along as part of a Sunday afternoon pub – gallery stroll and decide to drop in at the Chisenhale because Steve was taught by Nick Crowe. It had been billed as “a[…]

CAMRA weeps: The Guardian reports on CAMRA’s report on pub heritage. It’s interesting that this pops up the week after Pete and I found ourselves inveighing against CAMRA’s failure to obsess about the pub environment. I’ve or[…]

Keith and the Impact Allstars — RaindropsIt looks innocuous enough: more so when you find out it’s a cover of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”. Keith could be one of any number of reggae Keiths, known or unknown. It’s[…]

I have now lived in the drab world of the non-smoker for two long and sorry years. I promised myself when I gave up that I would not become one of those dreadful converts, whining about their clothes stinking of cigs after five minutes in the pub (of[…]