⤳ In the middle of the week, we schlepped up to Camden, to the Roundhouse to see Brett Anderson and the Paraorchestra do their Death Songbook show. It was a really good show, very different from yo...

⤳ This week was all about seeing friends in pubs, bars and restaurants. ⤳ But before that kicked off, I went to the National Gallery to see The Last Caravaggio. It’s free and definitely worth a lo...

⤳ Finally got see Dune 2 on the big screen, just before it left the cinema. It’s an impressive spectacle, and it didn’t feel as long as its 2h 47m (!) running time; but I don’t think I was as blown...

⤳ Just a quick roundup because I skipped a few weeks (mainly because I was on holiday over a couple of weekends, but other things happened too). ⤳ Part of Nina’s birthday present was a trip to the...

Last week, Nina and I flew off to Antigua for a week. Bit of a luxury, but it was Nina’s birthday and she really needed a ‘do nothing but sit on a beach’ holiday. I struggle a bit with those kind o...

⤳ It was a busy work week this week, all sorts of things were kicking off at Brink (you can read about them in this LinkedIn post) and the work I’m doing around the company’s comms is starting to r...

⤳ I did even more record shopping this week. Met up with my friend, John in Hackney to visit Stranger Than Paradise, YoYo Records, BBE, World of Echo and Idle Moments (and some stall on Broadway Ma...

⤳ Highlight of the week was convincing my friend Matt (owner of the amazing When Spaceships Appear record shop) to come down to South East London for a spot of record shopping, a few pints and a pi...

⤳ This week hasn’t been as ‘culturally rich’ as previous week which is a grand way of saying that a higher proportion of the week was spent drinking and eating various things. ⤳ In my defence, Ni...

⤳ Well, we’re almost at the end of January. Practically every third person I know is ill (most with Covid), I’m doing well with my ‘read more books’ resolution and markedly less well with my ‘lose ...

⤳ Little bit late this week, but I ‘m still here. My excuse is that is simply that last week was pretty busy; at least for midJanuary. ⤳ On Tuesday Nina and I went to see Alan Cumming do his one m...

⤳ I very much agree with Giles when he says Let’s make the indie web easier. I made the decision to move this site of Wordpress a few years ago (just because the plugin/update bloat was becoming to...

⤳ A pretty relaxed but fun start to the new year. Work didn’t restart until Wednesday, so I had an extra 24 hours to do some sofa occupying, reading, Celebrationfinishing, film watching etc. ⤳ Add...

⤳ I’m back! Back again. Tell a friend, etc… ⤳ I’ve updated my Media Diet page so it’s now a sortable gallery of covers/posters with all the info, like ratings and dates and comments, appearing whe...

⤳ On Thursday this week, I played the board game Mysterium with a couple of friends. I was actually given it as a Christmas present last year, but my gameplaying opportunities are so slim these day...

⤳ I finished Russell’s book: Do Interesting: Notice. Collect. Share. and one of the things he talks about in that book is ‘collecting’ things, sometimes just for the sake of collecting them at firs...

⤳ How is it October already? ⤳ This week has mainly been about working and writing. I’ve been trying to use this blog more and get back into a rhythm of writing more than just these ‘week notes’ h...

There is something really interesting and insightful in the latest issue of Alex Morris’s Strat Scraps newsletter (there is something interesting and insightful in pretty much every issue, so you s...

I’ve just finished Cory Doctorow’s latest book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation. I’ll talk more about the book in a future post, but something I wanted to get down right away...

⤳ We took a ‘road trip’ up north last weekend, to see my parents near Sheffield and Nina’s family near Manchester. It was very nice to see everyone, but I worked out I spent around 12 hours driving...

⤳ I didn’t post last week because I was too busy fiddling around with the backend of this blog, trying to fix an issue around the way Jekyll creates these posts. In trying to reverse engineer every...

“Writing for an audience keeps me honest.” So said Cory Doctorow in his 2021 blog post, The Memex Method. Here’s a bit more context: “The genius of the blog was not in the notetaking, it was ...

⤳ This is not a full Week Notesstyle post, I just wanted to list all the stuff I read while I was in Kefalonia last week…. ⤳ Lean Impact # How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good. A bit ...

⤳ I’m a bit late posting this because there’s been a lot going on. ⤳ I guess the biggest thing was putting London in Bits on ‘pause’. Here’s the issue of the newsletter that explains why (kind of)...

⤳ Finally started watching Colin From Accounts after everyone I know recommended it to us, and it’s as good as they all said it is. Think I needed some daft, dogbased comedy. ⤳ Also started watchi...

⤳ It’s been a while. No real reason. Just… Stuff happening, like stuff does. ⤳ As noted here this site has had a little bit of a refresh. As part of that I’ve added a ‘media diet’ page to track wh...

Just a quick admin update to say that: The page which archives all the Cracking Flags shows from loose.fm has been updated. It used to contain embeds from Mixcloud, but they all seem to have di...

⤳ Two things happened in the past week: I went to Glastonbury… And I came back from Glastonbury with COVID. ⤳ Just to focus on the more positive half for a second: Glastonbury was amazing. I’ve no...

⤳ I fell out of the habit of writing these again. It was my birthday at the start of the month, so we were away for a few days, and that threw me off. But, if I’m honest about it, I have the ‘procr...

⤳ It’s been a busy couple of weeks since I last wrote anything here. Mainly work stuff that you won’t want to read about, but also going out for dinner (Bottle & Rye in Brixton, now a bit o...

⤳ A quick one this week, because it’s a bank holiday Monday and I have pizza to start making (actually the dough has been fermenting away for two days, but it’s getting close to the cooking time i...

⤳ There were no week notes last week, because we were away for a long weekend in Dungeness. It’s been on my ‘to visit’ list for a long time, mainly for Derek Jarman’s beautiful cottage and garden, ...

⤳ It’s been a great couple of weeks for London in Bits. The article about Bradley’s Spanish Bar became our first ever issue to receive more than 10,000 views, (thankfully it sneaked in before the T...

⤳ It’s been a few weeks since I managed to write something here. I’m going to blame the fact that we were on holiday for a week, then it was my wife’s birthday, then it was our wedding anniversary....

→ This week, I watched another cult film from the 70s: Deep End (actually, I just realised it was reelased in 1969 close enough). directed by Polish director Jerzy Skolomowsk, I didn’t realise he...

→ This plan to make a conscious effort to get out from behind my desk, so I don’t go insane seems to be building up steam. One part of it is commissioning stuff for the newsletter that requires me ...

→ Quiet, but productive. That’s how I’d describe this past week. Got quite a lot of freelance work done (mainly writing, but a bit of strategy stuff too), which felt good. And lined up a few London...

→ This column which appeared in The Guardian on Monday got some corners of Twitter so upset that they slung abuse at the author, and the paper had to change the headline to remove the references to...

→ Nina was away in New York with work this week, so I had a bit of time to watch a couple of films I knew she wouldn’t mind me watching without her. First I went to see Aftersun at the Screen on th...

→ On Friday evening I went with a friend to Dem, a brilliant Turkish restaurant in Crystal Palace. I hadn’t been for a while, and it was great to go back, because the food is always excellent and ...

→ The first real week back at work was pretty uneventful. Back into some freelance writing/editing and LiB into full swing again. I’m a little behind on commissioning for the newsletter after the b...

→ Happy new year! We got away for a few days over New Year’s Eve, to a little cottage in Suffolk. It was for the dog’s benefit as well as ours South East London is a fireworks war zone for days o...

→ A truncated entry this week because we’re off to Lapland with our niece and nephew to find Santa. I’m told he has presents. → Some interesting things I’ve read this week: Tom Whitwell’s 52 Thin...

→ A tough start to this week. First, we learned that the brilliant Mimi Parker had died. Low mean a lot to me. The album The Great Destroyer especially is very important to me for a whole host of r...

→ A new tradition began this past weekend: Fat Halloween. Originating from a misheard question (you had to be there), Fat Halloween is an evening of pizza (Yardsale), ice cream (Ben & Jerry...

The Verge has redesigned its hompage and included what they call a Storystream news feed: “Our plan is to bring the best of oldschool blogging to a modern news feed experience and to have our e...

Turns out I’ve been averaging one of these posts every two weeks. I’m not sure why I get so frantic about not posting here regularly. or why I get so concerned about posting the ‘right’ things. Sur...

Above, David Lynch takes a break from reporting on the weather to explain his Incredible Checking Stick. And he’s right, wood is such a blessing for humanity. The last line of this video will keep ...

It’s been a while since updated my WeekNotes. A whole month in fact. I think that’s because I was focused on getting my lockdown head straight and then just fell out the habit a little bit. I thi...

Above, my favourite lockdown tweet so far. Hell, it might even my favourite tweet ever! It’s been a couple of weeks since I last posted an update here. Not sure why that is really. I think it mig...

How Bollywood gave Britney Spears her greatest hit pic.twitter.com/H8WXS6TxdF — Voices of Color (@vocinsider) March 31, 2020 I’m on the sofa, my Google Pixelbook on my lap, about to write t...

That’s David Hockney and his dog, Ruby, sat in his garden in Normandy where he’s been painting the blossom in his back garden and dispensing wisdom like this: “We have lost touch with nature ra...

Having finished Burnham Wood (more on that at a later date) I’m free to pick up and race through Russell’s latest: Do Interesting: Notice. Collect. Share. A few highlights from 20 minutes of readi...