Liberty at a loss

A new hope

A sabbatical breaking post, but important given what's going on across the pond today.

This poster from artist Shepard Fairey isn't quite as striking as the now-iconic Hope poster he created for Obama's 2008 campaign. That said, it is, like Kamala Harris, the best we have.

Fingers crossed for today. Let's hope the orange man-baby retires from all walks of public life after this. Maybe leave politics and world affairs to the grown-ups, eh Don?

Now what?

For those of you that expressed an interest last time, here are some more gems from The Connor Brothers that suit my current mood just fine...

Not from where I'm standing

I got to see some art by The Connor Brothers recently. Their impressive back-story involving an escape by twin brothers from a particularly luddite American cult is sadly a work of fiction; rather, they are former art dealers turned print makers Mike Snelle and James Golding, and are perhaps best known for adding subversive or post-modern captions to pulp fiction book covers - you know, this kind of thing:

I loved every print I saw like this, and took loads of pictures, going back to some prints time and again. And I got to thinking - where had I seen this before? Not just something like it, but a piece of art in this exact style, and by The Connor Brothers? And then it came to me.

Not From Where I'm Standing is a compilation of 20 Bond film themes covered by current and former members of Cinerama and The Wedding Present. I wrote more about it back in 2020, when it was released. Anyway, here's a song from it; I need no other excuse for a bit of Such Small Hands.

Art for AI's sake

In which I continue to experiment with AI so you don't have to...

I read recently about a website called Night Cafe that enables users to generate all manner of pictures, in all manner of styles, without ever picking up a pencil or paintbrush. I had to have a play, of course, in my continuing but most likely futile attempt to be ready for the eventual takeover of our robot overlords.

It's pretty good, actually. You provide it with a text prompt of what you want to draw (the irony here being that you don't actually do any drawing), select a rendering model and processing algorithm, and click 'Create' (the irony here being that ... oh, you get the idea by now).

I thought I would try to create something that would never be seen otherwise, so entered a prompt of "Morrissey eating a hambuger". Here is the result:

There are, of course, a couple of things to note here. I cannot draw this well, for starters. But it's not perfect. For a start, it hasn't followed the brief: SPM is holding the burger here, not eating it. And finally, from this and other experimentations I can tell you that Night Cafe, at least, struggles with hands, their angle, their positioning, even (sometimes) the number of fingers and having two right hands and no left. Look at SPM's left hand here, for example. So it struggles with complexity ... for now, at least. I might try this again in a year's time...

Public service announcement

In case, like me, you need reminding sometimes...

...and away

I've been away. I'm back for a while, maybe not for long. So here's a time-based photograph from my spell away.

Art for (sleeve) art's sake

I had an email today promoting the release of Knebworth 1996, a double CD of Oasis's era-defining live show of 25 years ago. I'm not bothered about it, and I won't be buying it, but have a look at the sleeve art:

It's proper crap, isn't it?

By all means tell me if I'm wrong but it looks like something a home-taper would knock up for their recording of the gig off the radio, and run off on their 90s inkjet printer. Or maybe, if you're feeling generous, a bootleg. To me, it just screams how little effort was put into this, all concerned being safe in the knowledge that it will sell well enough anyway.

I knocked up an alternative in ten short minutes, and that included searching for the images. But this feels more in keeping, doesn't it? And meets whatever design brief was presumably given stating that the cover must show Liam but not Noel:

I'm not wild about the title in black with a white drop-shadow, but wanted to keep to the monochrome palette of the photograph. And at least I used the proper logo.

Anyone else want to have a go? Doesn't matter how poor your design and/or IT skills are, whatever you come up with will almost certainly be better than the official sleeve art...

Imitation, the sincerest form...

Earlier in the year, I had a bit of a sort out, and cleared out quite a few things I had been holding on to for a long time, usually for reasons lost in time (example finds here and here).

Here's another postcard that was loitering in my stationery drawer:

It's Bridge in the rain; after Hiroshige by Vincent van Gogh, painted by him in Paris at the tail-end of 1887. You can click the above to enlarge it for a closer view, and you should, because it's wonderful. I bought the postcard from the excellent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, in 2017.

So, about that "after Hiroshige"... well, here's Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and Atake by Utagawa Hiroshige, painted in Japan exactly 30 years earlier, and currently residing in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art:

So although they were thirty years apart and on opposite sides of the world, van Gogh was sufficiently influenced by Hiroshige's work to have a go at his own interpretation. No mean feat in the 19th Century, pre-Internet, pre-television, pre-long-haul-flights. How did it come to his attention, I wondered? Turns out that like many European artists in the closing decades of the 1800s, van Gogh was inspired by the ukiyo-e woodblock prints which began to flood the West after Japan opened its harbours to foreign merchant ships in 1854. "I envy the Japanese for the enormous clarity that pervades their work," Vincent wrote to his brother Theo in 1888. "They draw a figure with a few well-chosen lines as if it were as effortless as buttoning up one's waistcoat."

Of course, you can follow the chain of influence further back. Here's Sea at Satta, Suruga Province painted by Hiroshige in 1858.

And here's The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai, in 1831.

There's nothing new under the sun, is there?

Of all these wonderful paintings, it's van Gogh's dark homage that appeals most to my current state of mind. So here's a rain-themed tune to round things off, from an up-and-coming beat combo who look like they could go far.

Latitude... or Cinch presents a test event

It's thirteen years since I first went to the Latitude Festival, three years since I last went. A lot has changed in that period, and Latitude didn't happen last year for obvious reasons. It was back for 2021 though, as a government-approved test event... which meant full capacity, no face masks and no social distancing! All of which felt a bit weird, if I'm honest. Latitude has changed a bit too, I think - it is still a multi-disciplinary festival, but music dominates more than ever - that's a shame, much as I love the music, because the variety of content is what has always made Latitude so special. It's got bigger too - when I first went, capacity was a little over 20,000; it's 40,000 now. And sponsorship? Since when did Latitude become "Cinch presents Latitude"? As in, Cinch the used car retailer whose ads are fronted by the distressingly ubiquitous Rylan Clark-Neal... to the extent that his made-up face gurned down at the main stage crowd from the jumbotrons between acts? I guess it is progress, but it, like the loss of some non-music stages, jarred with me. What has progressed well is the festival app: when I last went, in 2018, the app was terrible and a physical programme was still an essential purchase; this year, I still bought a programme but didn't use it once - the app was near perfect. Other changes? Well, for the first time since 2009, Mrs New Amusements came with me... and for the first time ever Master New Amusements came too. This would change the festival experience in several ways, some foreseen, some surprising. But anyway, enough general rambling: here, in the manner of my old festival diaries, is what I got up to. All crappy photos can be embiggened with a click.

Friday:

• The Kids' Area. After the long trek in from the day ticket car park, proving our COVID test status (proof of two jabs for adults, negative lateral flow test for kids), getting our wristbands and finally getting onto the main site, our first stop was lunch by the waterside and the Kids' Area, mainly to get Master NA (who still wasn't sure what to expect) on-board with the whole idea of a festival. The Kids' Area has loads of great activities for the younger festival goer, but we were a bit disappointed to see that some were fully-booked by 1pm, not just for Friday but for the whole weekend. Still, there was a tent set up with a variety of musical instruments for kids to try, so Master NA and I sat down and had a guitar jam, which was nice.
• The Trailer Park. Next we worked our way up to the Trailer Park, a wooded area that was home to an assembly of steam-punk sculpture; I particularly like Carantula, a small hatchback that had been given eight legs and loomed large over visitors to this area. There was also live performance, though we arrived just as a seemingly very popular act ended.
• Esther Freud : The Listening Post. The fact that there are no longer separate book and poetry tents was slightly offset by the size of the sole replacement, The Listening Post - so big, in fact, that only the most popular authors will fill it, I'd say. It wasn't full for Esther, which is a shame as she spoke well about her latest novel I Couldn't Love You More and her writing process.
• Jessica Fostekew : Comedy Arena. Whilst the rest of the New Amusements clan had a bit of a breather, I popped into the Comedy Arena to see who was on, and it was Jessica. She had a nice routine about gender stereotypes, on how "to grow a pair" (of balls) is to be strong, and how "to be a pussy" is to be weak. She also took aim at Boris Johnson, guaranteeing a good reaction from the left-leaning, liberal Latitude crowd. And on meditation, Jessica offered the line, "If you've got time for meditation, you're not the one who needs meditation," which, at the time, I felt was worthy of noting down.
• 
  Colin Macleod : Sunrise Arena. Colin is a part-time crofter, part-time singer/songwriter from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He and his band trade in an agreeable, if slightly unremarkable, brand of Celtic folk rock, maybe with a twist of Americana; unremarkable maybe, but perfect for mid-afternoon in the woods. A lot of the songs seem to have isolation or separation as their theme, not surprising given Colin's remote home and lifestyle. An affable, easy-going frontman, at one point Colin quipped "I've been stuck on an island for two years," to which someone in the audience, as quick as a flash, replied, "So have we."
• 
  Before Breakfast : BBC Music Introducing Stage. One of the best things about Latitude, or indeed any large festival, is the joy of a serendipitous find. Example: after Colin, we wandered up to the In The Woods area (where I found the best, and cheapest, cup of tea I had all day) and the adjacent BBC Introducing stage, where Sheffield's Before Breakfast were on. Not your average girl band, Before Breakfast feature voice, piano, cello and bass. Close vocal harmonies are clearly important to their sound, as is the strength and performance instincts of their lead singer, Gina. Brush My Hair (and tell me that you love me) seems a very representative track, if you're interested.
• 
  The Snuts : The Sunrise Arena. NA Minor and I headed back to the Sunrise Arena next, to take in The Snuts. I'd heard a fair bit about them, mostly from the periodical emails I get from Parlophone, but I was completely unfamiliar with their music <<insert traditional comment about being old and parochial here>>. And what a great surprise they served up! Their lively sound, light show and between-songs interaction (especially from fast-talking frontman Jack Cochrane) all suggest they could, perhaps should have been playing a bigger stage. Whatever, the Sunrise Arena was rammed for this. Definitely worth further investigation, I shall be starting with their chart-topping debut album WL (which apparently stands for West Lothian, from whence they come). This was my personal performance highlight.
• Women's Prize for Fiction : The Listening Post. We then scooted back to rejoin Mrs NA in the book tent, where a panel session on the Women's Prize for Fiction was in full flow. We'd missed a fair bit of this, obviously, but as an aspiring author I still found the later questions on writing process to be interesting, as well as the book recommendations.
• 
  Stephen Fretwell : The Sunrise Arena. I was really keen to see Stephen, and I wasn't alone - the Sunrise Arena was even more packed than it had been for The Snuts. I think, judging by their reaction, that most of the crowd were long-time fans too. One man and an acoustic guitar is a lot to fill an arena, even one as compact as Sunrise, but Fretwell was equal to the task. Run, familiar to even non-fans thanks to Gavin & Stacey, provided a bit of audience singalong, whilst calls from the audience for the sublime Emily and New York were both granted. Ironic, really, that Stephen apologised for dropping the f-bomb between songs, mindful of kids in the audience, and then ended with New York, with its "Fuck what they say..." chorus. Long-time readers may even recall that I made New York a Clandestine Classic, back in the day, so I was especially glad to hear that get an airing. I may have had a bit of a moment.
• Secret Artists live podcast : The Listening Post. I left the clan getting henna patterns done and went off to see John Osborne, but got there early enough to catch the tail-end of Annie McGrath doing her Secret Artists podcast live. The gist of this seemed to be that Annie would be in conversation with a guest - in this case, comedian Sophie Duker - whilst they both painted their interpretation of a given title or theme. What I saw of this was fun. Probably not fun enough to make me subscribe to the podcast, but fun nonetheless.
• John Osborne : The Listening Post. I've read two of John's books, Radio Head and The Newsagent's Window, and enjoyed both (especially the latter, which is Dave Gorman-esque, in a good way), but he was reading poetry at Latitude, dipping into his previous collection No One Cares About Your New Thing and promoting his new collection, Supermarket Love Stories, in which the poems are aisle-themed. He's excellent, funny, insightful, self-deprecating. I met him briefly afterwards, to buy a copy of No One Cares... and was pleased to see poet Luke Wright emerge from somewhere to give him a hug, before turning to then greet and hug comedian Mark Watson, who just happened to be strolling by. Oh, the author's life I will never lead...
• 
  Mabel : The Obelisk Arena. I'll be honest, before this I was sceptical - had Mabel done enough, I wondered, to warrant being the penultimate act on the main stage? Would she even be anywhere, I uncharitably hypothesised, if she was not Neneh Cherry's daughter? Well, I still think those are valid questions, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. We were only there as a nod to Master NA's youth, and it's telling that the Latitude crowd noise was more of a scream than a roar, but Mabel put on a really dynamic, lively show, augmented by a well-drilled dance troupe. And she can really sing too, even if it was sometimes a bit Beyonce-lite for my taste. She finished with her bigest hits (ahem, as far as I know), Tick Tock and finally, with confetti canons unleashed, Don't Call Me Up; even parochial old dinosaur me was able to join in with the chorus for that.
• 
  Wolf Alice : The Obelisk Arena. And so we came to the reason I had bought day tickets for Friday rather than over the weekend. I had seen Wolf Alice play the same stage three years ago, but here they were headlining, and with a new, more mature album to promote. I was excited. Unfortunately, the rest of our little party were less enthralled, finding the band too loud and a bit too strident. Also, NA Minor was starting to flag - it had been a long day on our feet, and we'd covered a lot of ground. The bottom line is that we moved on after twenty minutes, just as Ellie and the band were starting to get on to the new material. What I can tell you is that the new song I heard was darker, slower, less strident... very promising.
• 
  Hot Chip : BBC Sounds Stage. I remember when this used to the BBC 6Music stage ...grumble, grumble, old, old, progress, progress... Anyway, I hoped that a blast of Putney's finest, and the spectacle of a large crowd bobbing up and down in a giant tent, would reinvigorate the New Amusements ensemble. It didn't, sadly, and we lasted a song and a half, which is a shame because the band looked to be warming up nicely. NA Minor is not even at high school yet though, and this was a step too far for him, on a long day - he didn't want the crowd, or the volume, or the chest-vibrating bass. We bailed out, and like the good dad I am I didn't even moan about it. Not aloud, anyway.

And that was that. Because we set off on the long walk back to the car park nice and early, we even beat the traditional queue of departing day-ticketers, so that was a bonus. But what to make of Latitude 2021? Seventeen months since my last gig, it felt great to be there, even if a little surreal to be amongst such a large crowd of people, and with not a face mask in sight. COVID did have an impact though, with some acts having to cancel at the last minute: Fontaines D.C. and Arlo Parks both had to scrub from the Saturday line-up, after positive test results.

Also, I bristled somewhat at the inevitable commercialisation and sponsorship that is creeping into this, my favourite festival, and the inevitable attendant mainstreaming of the line-up... but it's still a grand day out, even though I didn't get to see everything I would have liked: I didn't see any theatre or film shows, for example, and missing the bulk of both Wolf Alice and Hot Chip seems wasteful at best. Going with my family made it a very different festival experience... my last four visits have been alone, and that's great for seeing exactly what you want to see, but it does make it hard to share the experience. This was better, much better. Master NA proclaimed it a brilliant day. I hope we are all there next year.

Wide shot of Obelisk Arena headliners Wolf Alice

Catching up / emptying boxes

Had a weekend of tidying up and sorting through old boxes of paperwork here at NA Towers. All kinds of interesting ephemera came to light. One such object was a museum brochure, advertising the forthcoming exhibitions and events for Summer 2007 (yes, I'm a hoarder). I'd hung on to it because I really liked the photograph on the front cover, which was lifted from a touring exhibition of contemporary photography from the Victoria & Albert Museum, due to arrive that May. It's untitled and was shot by Corinne Day, for Vogue. Here it is.

Now, as you might expect, I have no interest in Vogue magazine, or fashion shoots; I don't have an especial interest in Kate Moss either. But blimey, this photograph struck me (beguiled me, perhaps), enough to hang on to the aforementioned museum brochure for, what, fourteen years, all the time thinking, I must do something with that picture, sometime.

So here I am, doing something, albeit the something in question is just me parking a photograph I like and commenting on the fact that I'm a hoarder who squirrels things away, just in case.

To flesh this post out a bit, here are some links:
Corinne Day | The Vogue feature in full | A blog post on how the shoot was (probably) lit | The photo at the V&A

There, I've done something with it. Guess I can (reluctuantly) put the brochure in the recycling bin now...

What was on your wall?

Recently, I have begun the slow process of scanning and digitising a box of old slide photographs. A lot of them are pretty duff - I had a cheap Halina point-and-push at the time - but there are one or two that shine out of the gloom, tiny windows into a long-forgotten past. One such photo showed me in my teenage bedroom, apparently celebrating a birthday and displaying a haul of presents. And I've got to tell you, reader, it was like time travel. A t-shirt that I used to love but had forgotten owning; having lots of hair; and that bedroom, a small box that I had to share with the airing cupboard, but mine, my space. I've been scrutinising that photo carefully, the details pinging vivid memories. I've particularly enjoyed looking at what I had on the wall or, to be more precise, the side of the airing cupboard. Blu-Tac was my friend, as I built a collage of images, posters, postcards and cuttings to cover the white gloss, and seeing it all again ... well, it's quite the Proustian rush.

Example: in the early 80s, I was a regular reader of Starburst magazine. It was a pre-Internet window into what was happening in the world of science-fiction and fantasy, and I'm very pleased to see it's still going. Anyway, I had clearly kept those magazines, and plundered a couple of pull-out reproduction film posters, for I had these on my late-80s bedroom wall, in amongst the collage:

I quite enjoyed Invasion of the Body Snatchers (though, at the risk of being called a heathen, I much prefer the 1978 remake with Donald Sutherland and, teen swoon, Brooke Adams). I hadn't (and still haven't) seen Attack of the 50ft Woman ... I think teenage me just liked the idea of a giant, scantily-clad woman with impossibly long legs on his bedroom wall. Don't judge me.

So can you remember what was on your wall? Care to share?

Important footnote: aside from the 1978 version, other remakes of Invasion should be avoided like the plague. I suspect the Daryl Hannah-powered remake of Attack should also be avoided.

A potentially expensive new hobby

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a keen (but very amateur) road cyclist (think sportives, not races), and that later this year I will be cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats in nine days. Well, as part of getting my kit together for that, and to help with fundraising, I designed myself a custom cycling jersey for the event; it arrived last week, and I am pleased to report that I'm very happy with the result.

So much so that I got to thinking... I could put literally anything on a jersey. Anything! This could be the solution to not being able to find many jerseys that I like. Designs like these, for example:

Yes, I did put the Reception Records rose logo on the sleeve of the George Best jersey. And yes, that is the vinyl run-out etching message "The Impotence of Being Ernest" on the sleeve of the Hatful of Hollow jersey.

I could get carried away with this, I really could. There are so many album sleeves, book covers and film posters that would make great jerseys. But these aren't cheap. They are custom-printed one-offs and ship to the UK from Germany. I could very quickly spend a lot of money...

...or I could just take orders?

About being timeless

I found this postcard of Sophia Loren in my stationery drawer this afternoon. When you've recovered from mocking me for having a stationery drawer (in fairness to myself I should point out the drawer contains lots of things, stationery being just one of them), take a moment to consider that this photograph was taken in 1966 by Milton H. Greene (best known for his work with Marilyn Monroe).

1966. Fifty five years ago. And yet it looks pretty contemporary, doesn't it? Not hard to imagine a current star, maybe Mila Kunis, striking a similar pose, with similar results.

Is that the definition of timelessness, then? To age, whilst remaining contemporary? Or is it rather that fashion has gone around so far as to be back where it started?

I think I prefer the idea that this is timeless...

Caught beneath the landslide

For more than a decade Kevin Cummins was chief photographer at the NME - sounds like a dream job, right? Hanging out with cool bands, creating iconic images, being backstage at gigs, being ahead of the curve for whatever was coming next, being "in". Sounds fantastic, doesn't it? I'm not at all envious...

One collection of his 90s/Britpop photography has already been published, as While We Were Getting High, and now there's this, Caught Beneath The Landslide, a small hardback book that includes a few more photographs but this time bundles them with CDs, with sleevenotes from all manner of sources. It's a four CD collection which, if I can borrow from the promotional blurb, "brings together artists that topped the chart and set the agenda, some who were lauded one week and laughed at the next, and others who were just along for the ride. From an era of Lad’s mags and Girl Power, “football’s coming home” and chart battles making news headlines, it brings together Oasis and Blur, Pulp and Supergrass, Sleeper and Suede, Elastica and Echobelly, Gene and Menswear, and many more." But as Kevin himself makes clear in his intro, this is a broader take on indie music in 90s Britain, rather than just another Britpop coal-raking exercise.

More interestingly for me, as someone who already owns a lot of material that this compilation focuses on, it also claims "71 classic tracks, lost gems, live and alternative versions, b-sides and single edits", together with "in-depth sleeve notes exploring the bands, their influences, the labels and the individuals who defined the era"... so I treated myself, basically. Early orders, like mine, came with a signed A4-sized print of the cover art too. Guess I need to find a frame.

I'm still working through this, as we speak. I already know what my favourite photos from the book are, but I'll spare you more Louise Wener and Gene photos (it's not like either of them are strangers to this blog) and instead choose one of Sonya from Echobelly, in which she has SUCK MY EGO written on her fingers, and one of Jarvis Cocker, in which he looks like he should be teaching English at a selective boys' grammar.

Regarding the photography, Kevin has this to say: "I wanted the artists I worked with to look as cool as they sounded. That was the difference between working for the NME and other music publications. We approached our time with the bands as some kind of art project, as opposed to the chance of a pub crawl around Camden."

It's quite the art project...

Here's the song that CBTL picks for Echobelly; they feature an excellent live version, but that's not on YouTube. Must be rare then, right?

Caught Beneath The Landslide isn't cheap, but it's a nicely assembled item that would grace many a bookshelf. Here's the tracklist in full...

Which track catches your eye? And which would you never want to hear again?

Oh, and did I mention the sleevenotes...?

More street art: Lemmings

More street art: Leave the car at home

Always happy to see this guy's street art in the city...

The (im)persistence of memory

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali

I have a pretty good memory. In fact, at the risk of grandstanding, I'd go as far as to say I have an excellent memory. It's not photographic, or eidetic, or any other -ic, but I have very good recall. More often that not this is a blessing, though it can also be a curse (something I've sort of alluded to before). Either way, you'd want me on your pub quiz team.

Maybe this is partly why I'm interested in false memory syndrome. I'm not talking about generic common false memories - you know the sort, you think you remember something from a family holiday when you were two and a half but what you really remember is a photograph taken of you on that holiday. I have no empirical evidence to back this up but I suspect such "constructed" memories are quite common. No, what really interests me are memories of things that never happened.

Example. Reservoir Dogs is a film I've seen a lot, though not recently. I have a crystal-clear memory of Harvey Keitel, as Mr White, saying the following line to Michael Madsen, as Mr Blonde:

"Just because you say something is so [pause] doesn't necessarily make it fucking so!"

This memory is razor-sharp in my head. I can see how Harvey in standing, I can picture the angle his head is tilted at.

Except it didn't happen.

I know this, because I went looking for a video clip of the scene, with the intention of making it into a GIF-based meme rebuttal to all the blow-hard Trump supporters who asserted that they knew, they just knew, that the election had been stolen from them, despite the total lack of any evidence to corroborate that perspective. I know, I was bored, it's lockdown, what do expect? But to my surprise, YouTube failed me - I couldn't find the clip. I even tried Vimeo. Again, nothing. So I searched film-quote websites for Mr White soundbites, to make sure I'd got the wording of the quote right, just in case I had misremembered (although, in my arrogance, I didn't really think this was the case). Still no luck.

In desperation, I found a copy of the Reservoir Dogs script online, here (it's brilliant, by the way). Side note: did you know that "fuck" and its verb-form variants appear exactly 200 times in that script? Well, you do now. Anyway, by searching the script for "necessarily", I found these lines, as spoken by Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn):

"You beat on this prick enough, he'll tell ya he started the Chicago fire. That don't necessarily make it so."

And that's as close as anything in the whole film comes to my false memory. In fact, the scene as filmed, rather than as scripted, was even closer to my memory, with the F-bomb dropped as I had remembered (as filmed, the F-count is way higher than 200). But it wasn't Mr White speaking. I think maybe I conflated this with another scene in which Mr White argues swearily with Mr Blonde (the whole "You gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?" scene). Who knows. Basically, my subconscious mind took these two scenes and mashed them together to create an entirely new scene that never actually existed. Fascinating, eh?

It ain't necessarily so

Barking all day

So, false memory syndrome, that is to say memories of things that didn't happen rather than constructed memories, is fascinating. Freud was very interested in it, but what did he know? Maybe Tarantino unwittingly performed memory implantation on me instead ... but that's a whole other can of worms.

What a load of old waffle. Good excuse to write about a classic film though, eh? And yes, since today is 21/01 I did wait until 21:01 to post this - you should probably feel sorry for me...

The Unewsual II - the faded beauty of abandoned cars

I found much to like in this news story about a photographer who has been capturing old cars, as they are reclaimed by nature. You don't need to be a petrolhead to enjoy this either, just to know a good picture when you see one; it's really worth clicking through to...

Every picture tells a story

Really wish I'd taken this photograph...

It shows two NHS workers in PPE at St Thomas's hospital in London. And I'm not the only one who likes it - in various forms, it appeared on the front page of at least three newspapers today, look:

The first two papers are both owned by DMG Media, the last by News Corp. So the photographer who took it has made a couple of lucrative sales right there.

I particularly like how the photo is cropped by The Times, focusing on the unnamed worker with her latex-gloved hands to her masked and visored face. It's a striking image, is it not?