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Catch up

A selection of fresh posts for your delectation

Image: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Why I’m No Longer Talking to Brexiters About Brexit

I did something unusual this week. I saw something wrong, stupid and annoying online and didn’t get into a fight with the person who said it. It’s something I’ve found myself doing more and more lately, and it becomes a little easier each time, although it never feels completely natural. Wanting to correct misinformation or…

keyboard

Neither Am I

For years, I was the living embodiment of that classic Private Eye cartoon by (I think) Barry Fantoni: Two men. One says: ‘I’m writing a book’. The other replies: ‘Neither am I.’ The Book lived in my head as a fantastic possibility. I could do it any time, and it would be amazing. Any time.…

jameela

The sting

MOST of what’s gone wrong in British social and political life can be summed up with a fairly simple example using Jameela Jamil, a fruit-filled banquet and some bees. It’s about belief, fact-picking, tribalism and self-deception. But first, the bees. The story is fairly simple. The activist, actress, presenter and occasional model Jameela Jamil ran…

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Home & Pets

My family and other animals

IMG_2725

Trudy time

Trudy came to us earlier this year from Romania, via https://www.silverfoxdogrescue.com. She’d been on the street, then rounded up…

PUXB9756

She walked up to me, and in a dark brown voice…

Our time with Lola was brief but sweet. She’d been a breeding cat, passed about from owner to…

rosiesleep

You’ve (almost) lost that lovin’ feline

  Meet Rosie. We adopted her from the SPCA in 2016. She’d been living rough in a coal…

Sleepy Eli

Be seeing you

This is Eli. It’s important to note that, even when half-asleep and upside down, Eli is still judging…

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Politics, travel etc.

All the stuff from the outside world

Image: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Why I’m No Longer Talking to Brexiters About Brexit

I did something unusual this week. I saw something wrong, stupid and annoying online and didn’t get into a fight with the person who said it. It’s something I’ve found myself doing more and more lately, and it becomes a little easier each time, although it never feels completely natural. Wanting to correct misinformation or…

jameela

The sting

MOST of what’s gone wrong in British social and political life can be summed up with a fairly simple example using Jameela Jamil, a fruit-filled banquet and some bees. It’s about belief, fact-picking, tribalism and self-deception. But first, the bees. The story is fairly simple. The activist, actress, presenter and occasional model Jameela Jamil ran…

road

A Name For What You Lose

‘Vote Corbyn, lose Scotland.’ That was the big scary warning from clodhopping would-be provocateur Toby Young on Twitter this week. While it might play well with the Tobester’s target audience of enthusiastically gullible bullshit-swallowers, it brought something else to mind for me: The music of Scritti Politti. More specifically, this pungent lyrical nugget from ‘The…

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Guitars, music etc.

Sounds, instruments, gear, music and more

The pick of the bunch

There’s something indefinably magical about the intricate, chiming sounds of a finger-picked acoustic guitar. It’s something I’d always longed to learn and yearned to do well, but it always seemed too far out of reach – both figuratively and, as far as my permanently tangled sausage-fingers are concerned, literally. I’ll never be in the Tommy…

Gretsch G6120

Take your pick

Mark Hanson’s ‘The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking’ is one of the guitar tuition books I’ve returned to most often over the years. If you love players like Chet Atkins, Merle Travis, Scotty Moore or John Renbourn, Travis picking is a style of playing you’ll really want to add to your guitar skillset. I certainly…

oasis

Britflop

I recently rediscovered a batch of old files from my first PC, dating back to the mid-to-late nineties, crammed full of old music reviews, interviews and oddities. It’s an interesting time capsule of how I felt at the time about music many of us have been living with (sometimes unwillingly) for decades now.   FROM…

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