Despite having tickets for the much larger, further away, seated, mid-week Cardiff gig as part of the main Scissor Sisters anniversary tour, I was thrilled to see a Bristol warm-up date announced for just after I got back from New York, in what was once SWX but is now apparently Electric Bristol. The fact that I was stuck in front of some real pricks who had clearly had too much coke and still enjoyed myself is testament to how good this gig was. Eschewing the “one set of the album, a second set of the greatest hits” approach, this is a happy jumble of the two. Starting with the imperial stomp of Laura, it’s an instant transportation back to my final year of primary school. The number of big, good singles they had from that album that I knew in 2004 is quite something. I am beyond thrilled to get I Can’t Decide thrown into the mix, along with She’s My Man and, of course, I Don’t Feel Like Dancing off, in my opinion, their superior follow-up Ta-Dah!, but that’s not this tour, so I take what I can get. The hits go down a storm, the album tracks still get a good response, and they end the main set with a heartbreaking Return To Oz. There’s a moment in Take Your Mama where Shears hits a slightly but noticeably bum note, and his amusement at noting and correcting it is contagious and a good sign of how live this really is. This is still the size of venue they should have been aiming for in the first time, considering that Cardiff still I don’t think is sold out, but here we are. Tom Rasmussen is a fine support act - “oysters for lunch, ass for dinner” is oddly catchy as a chorus, and it’s the right energy and vibe for this night.
Still reading
Still watching
Still reading
After a 7 hour red-eye flight where even being in business class has not helped the lack of sleep, I am relieved to have a lounge to go to. It is a new sensation for me to go from landing on a plane to being in a shower within 30 minutes, and it’s almost worth the price of business class alone. I’m still genuinely unable to eat anything after my final day in New York binge, so I am content to curl up on a chair with a cup of tea and a book for a while, eschewing the multitude of hot and cold breakfast options. Eventually, Dad comes to pick me up so I can go nap in my own bed at home, and the job is done.
Watched on the plane back, which probably contributed an extra half-star or so to the rating. Hard not to compare it unfavourably to Paddington 2, but a fun enough romp to pass the time in a vacuum (so to speak).
Continuing the mid-checkout-airport time-killing, we figure that Grand Central would be a good shelter from the rain. We quickly conclude that in order to be able to sit down, we’re going to have to actually buy something from somewhere, and this seems like the first reasonable place (Alasdair semi-jokingly suggests the oyster bar, but even I couldn’t manage it at that point in the day). A perfectly fine yuzu seltzer passes further time.
In the awkward period between checking out of the hotel and it being time to go to the airport, we have to kill time - ideally indoors because it’s absolutely pissing it down, so no just getting to wander the streets of New York. Alasdair finds an indoor market near where we’ve been for an early lunch, and that seems to have a cafe in it. There are many delicious looking things, include some kind of earl grey choux pastry thing. Unfortunately, I am stuffed, so an actual earl grey tea is the one, as I read a magazine full of one page articles amidst multiple pages of ads and photo shoots. The time passes.
Had the first third of this on in the hotel room getting ready to leave for the day. Came back at the end of the day to find that the same channel was showing the film again, so caught the final third. That is enough to log it here. American television is dreadful, you cannot believe. Not very good, but Stephen Root is in it!
Still watching
Having had a surprisingly big lunch, when we have a lighter, earlier dinner, we do so knowing that I’m going to treat myself to a Milk Bar trip for something to have later in the evening once firmly ensconced in my pyjamas. I don’t, however, know at that point what I’m going to have. The last time I visited, I was only able to get a slice of cake, as their drink machine was out of order. So this time, in an ad hoc manner, I decide to double down. First up, a cereal milk milkshake, which is one of my favourite milkshakes I’ve had - topped with cornflakes, it really genuinely does taste like cereal milk. To follow, much later, is a slice of their quadruple chocolate cake - the sponge is oddly dry, but the ganache is lovely and does actually bind the sponge together quite well. It takes me the next morning to finish it, but what’s the harm in a little chocolate cake for breakfast on holiday?
A fun collection of short stories that does not attempt to be more than that (cf. the number of collections that feel the need to interconnect). Williams seems to love a neat conceit built around wordplay, but the highlights here are the ever-so-slightly heartbreaking ones - a skywritten proposal, a shipping forecast gone awry - which really make the most of the form, ending before the ending, leaving you with the ambiguous uneasy feeling in your stomach as you wonder what happens next.
The GOAT of American cookies, and a thrill to see that they have a vegan (well, catch-all dietary) cookie for Alasdair to enjoy as well. I go for the double chocolate cookie - in for a cent, in for a dollar - which is more spherical than flat. A monster of a thing. More gooey than crunchy. No bad thing! I pair it, counterintuitively, with an iced chocolate which isn’t even on the menu but they seem chipper as to figuring it out, and to be fair they do.
Finally! A hot chocolate! A sign on the counter warns me that, in order to fully activate the starch, the hot chocolate is very hot. They’re not wrong - I only attempt to tackle it a subway ride and a walk to the hotel later. It’s a very deep hot chocolate, more bitter than sweet, even with the whipped cream (scooped from a tub - a tub!), which honestly took me by surprise in a country where even the bread is full of sugar. It’s quite nice, but lacked the zing of a good, balanced hot chocolate.
Having popped into Grand Central for Alasdair to get the iconic photos, it would seem rude not to drop down into the dining concourse to get a snack for later in the day. I weight up my options, and after a tough call between this and Magnolia Bakery, I opt for Doughnut Plant, because I really want to have the Valrhona chocolate donut again. Later in the evening, I devour it standing in the hotel room (no crumbs in the bed!), and it is everything I want. The donut is well-coated in a thick, luscious chocolate glaze; the dough itself tears apart nicely, not too dense, but with some heft behind it. The dream.
We don’t have time for the whole museum, but the monument itself is in our reach. It’s a genuinely quite impressive piece of architecture and memorial, and surprisingly low-key for the Americans. When we visited, the fountains were off due to maintenance, but this had no massive impact on the effect.
Another New York mainstay for me at this point, from all the way back in 2019. I cannot resist the lure of the Buvette waffle sandwich, so much so that a) I am eating this all together too close to lunchtime for my own good, and b) I am dragging Alasdair along to really the only place this holiday where he really cannot have anything to eat. I am willing to burn that much goodwill for it. Two beautifully crisp but fluffy waffles, sandwiching bacon, gruyere, a fried egg, and maple syrup. An absolute smorgasboard of flavour profiles that mingle beautifully. I am and remain obsessed. Maybe one day I’ll come back and actually be sat at a table rather than the bar, but it’s all fun.
A poetry collection that traces the events and cast of characters across a London house party. A lot to like here, that transcends the context I am lacking. Some lovely reflections on being young and finding your place.
10:30 - 11:20
So happy to be able to watch it, we came back again for more. Front row seats the moment the museum opened. Delighted to be there for a turn-of-the-hour moment, and delighted that the kept the whole of the Bad Santa alarm clock scene.
In my hunt for a hot chocolate in this goddamn city, I once again pop into somewhere recommended on Eater’s list of best hot chocolates in the city only to find that they are no longer doing a hot chocolate - it seems to be much more seasonal than in the UK. They don’t know what they’re missing. In any case, we had time to kill and a need for something to eat and drink, and their maple cruller looked very appealing. It tasted even better, practically melting in the mouth under the flaky maple glaze.
When we check into the hotel, we’re told that our room booking includes a free glass of wine in the lobby bar between 5pm and 6pm every day. We don’t need telling twice. Making our way in before getting changed for our dinner reservation elsewhere, having spent the day rushing around New York in the heat, we are served a delightfully chilled glass of anonymous white wine each, which absolutely hits the spot. The next day we return and, after much umming and ahhing, figure out the etiquette of tipping on a free drink - to be fair, our bartender is lovely and it feels rude not to. I hope he had a lovely birthday upstate (as he tells us, he loves NYC but you do have to get out of the city once a quarter).
I’m a sucker for the MoMA design store, and it’s practically a museum in its own right. A fantastic collection of obscure and artistic products, with an inevitable range of Teenage Engineering synths and a whole host of kitchenware that we would absolutely kit the kitchen out with if we had either the money for the objects themselves or even the cost of importing them all.
You try keeping Alasdair away from an exhibition with a title like that. It’s not not for me, but I can’t pretend textiles are my favourite medium. I am quite enamoured by the pieces where the original sketches/designs are paired with them, and dare I say it I find the latter more interesting.
15:55 - 16:35
I was so delighted to turn up to the MoMA and find this was being exhibited. So much so that we even came back the next day to watch more. I absolutely love The Clock. It is a masterpiece. It is hypnotic and compelling and an absolute exemplar of the core medium of film, the juxtaposition of discrete images to imply causation and connection. You watch these intercut clips, knowing they are unrelated, and still start trying to unconsciously thread together a narrative; actors reoccur at different ages. The thrill of seeing a film you recognise (In The Mood For Love ) turn up. I could watch this all day.
Our first museum trip of the holiday, we head straight to the top floor for the MoMA’s retrospective on Jack Whitten. A well-staged exhibition in which I find a lot to like whilst some of it does leave me cold. The more cosmic works, taking abstract pieces, tiling them, and reassembling them in different configurations really worked for me, especially seeing how that evolved over time and remained relevant even through to an iOS influence. Other pieces do less for me, but it’s well organised and Alasdair takes to it a lot more, so time well spent.
One of the great pleasures in life is having friends in places you like to go on holiday. I get to catch up with Alex and Shuyang, and also enjoyably get to introduce them to Alasdair and vice versa. We end up at Spicy Moon, not far from their apartment in the East Village, a veggie/vegan Chinese joint. Still pretty full from the earlier bagel, we go for the lunch deal, with some fried vegetable dumplings, in a luminous green wrapper, and the vegetable ramen which is absolutely unnecessarily stuffed with noodles. Like, too many noodles. It’s delicious, laden with tofu, bean sprouts, and other veg. I devour the broth, even if I simply cannot approach finishing the rest. We make a move and go see the changes Alex and Shuyand have made to their apartment, making the most of our brief overlap.
The conceit of a 200-odd-page email, unbroken, as a novel is fun, as is the typography that puts me in mind of Rebecca Watson’s Little Scratch. Goodlord unfortunately ends up going in a pretty similar direction tonally and narratively as Little Scratch, which is not an incorrect direction, nor one that should be discouraged, but a shame when it already feels so in debt formally. The constant referral to the email’s recipient by name also delightfully recalls Second Place by Rachel Cusk (oh Jeffers!), so I am well-disposed towards it. I will look forward to seeing what Ella Frear gets up to hence.
You can’t go to New York and not get a bagel. Surely. I have long been thinking about the bagel Alex picked up for me on my last visit a couple of years ago, and there’s a Brooklyn Bagel Company outpost not far from the hotel, so we head over for a quite sizeable breakfast - for as much as I’ve been reminisicing about that previous bagel, I’d forgotten just how substantial they are. I go for a pretty much classic - smoked salmon and a scallion cream cheese, with some capers and red onion, on an everything bagel, lightly toasted. It is perfect, and I will later pretty much not eat lunch. Alasdair finds they have a tofu-based vegan cream cheese, so gets to enjoy that on a blueberry bagel, and we both have an orange juice which really does hit the spot.
After a 7 hour flight and navigating our way from JFK to our midtown Manhattan hotel, we need a bite to eat - mostly to keep us up to a normal hour to avoid horrendous jet lag. Alasdair has found Planta Queen, a very short walk from the hotel, which is an all-vegan Japanese restaurant (a general New York/American theme: restaurants tend to be all or nothing on this, either fully plant-based or with minimal adjustments possible, as opposed to the UK’s pretty consistent multiple options in any restaurant). It is also Maki Monday (a decidedlt different concept to Maccies Mondays at work in the old days), with $9 maki rolls all round. I go for the Hawaiian, with pineapple and avocado, served with a mango aioli. I think I prefer Alasdair’s torched and pressed avocado rolls with a miso truffle glaze. The bao slider of crispy fake chicken is pretty good, but the star of the show is the 1000 layer crispy potato, with sour cream and caviar (take the quotation marks around the above as read). Both too full and too tired for a dessert, we take our leave to finally crash.
Something something two nickels about a film about a star of the music industry having a film made about them but with a twist. I like the notion of making a documentary about someone but in LEGO, but why did it have to be Pharrell? Much like Better Man, the chronology is all over the place, but it’s at least oddly frank about him running on autopilot and churning out blandness for a while.
Where do you draw the line between a novel and a collection of inter-connected short stories? Wherever it is, Universality is certainly straddling it. It does, I suppose, form a cohesive narrative across its chapters, but with each one written from different characters’ perspectives and indeed formal styles. I do enjoy the shifting sands on which it’s written, even if I’m less convinced by its conclusion. But I enjoy the ambiguity of it.
Once again, I enter the fine dining stylings of BA’s premium economy offering. I’m not going to do the same conceit as last time. Sparkling wine to start, many other alcoholic drinks as we go. A perfectly acceptable ricotta mezzaluna dish, with a perfectly acceptable salad to start, and an actually quite nice passionfruit panna cotta for dessert which really does feel like you’re eating a tropical Solero. A chicken pastry thing for a pre-landing snack which does the job. It’s just nice to have actual cutlery, to be honest.
An odd one, but the platonic ideal of a plane movie. Didn’t make as much of the admittedly batshit conceit of having Robbie Williams played by a CGI monkey, other than an on-the-nose joke about it every half an hour or so. The chronology bothered me, an admittedly not Robbie Williams superfan (Rock DJ coming up as a musical number in the Take That era? Come on now). Loses a star for not having CGI monkey Robbie Williams go to a UFO convention with Jon Ronson.
Oh boy. I think if I watched it again, it could easily go up two stars. But for now, this is maybe a bridge too far away from cohesion for me.
Second time seeing this, second time in the Watershed. Quite possibly his non-Twin Peaks peak (sorry, no, really, sorry), the perfect level of bleakness and levity and sense and nonsense. Silencio.
Still watching
A nice opportunity to catch up with Zac at St Nick’s market on a Friday lunchtime. With all the available options, we’re feeling a big box of meat. Low And Slow it is, once we’ve snaked through the always impressive queue. I have my classic order - the pork pitmaster fries, loaded with pulled pork, cheese (early in the process such that it is not a topping and suitably starts to melt under the heat and weight of everything else), pickles, crispy onions, and a dual drizzling of the house barbecue sauce and their pickleback mayo. There’s even a superfluous chopped herb smattering just to make sure you’re feeling at least something green has entered your system in the process. It’s delicious and too much and at least three days’s worth of your recommended sodium intake, but it hits the spot.
Frankie’s, once a brief pop-up in Kask Kitchen last year, is now semi-permanently established in the space, running two weeks of every month (with the other two being reserved for other pop-ups and events). This is music to my chicken-and-waffle loving ears, having been to that initial pop-up and been salivating over the prospect of ever having it again ever since. This is a trip long in the planning with Tom, trying to co-ordinate our availability with Frankie’s itself, but here we finally are. It is sheer indulgence in comfort food form, filling a gap that genuinely I don’t think anywhere in Bristol is doing right now. The menu is straightforward - four variants on chicken and waffles, and a few sides. In this instance, Tom and I are not looking for variety, and go for the maple syrup variant each. No regrets: a smooth, uncrystalline waffle topped with three generous pieces of fried chicken, the meat juicy and tender but maintaining its coating perfectly. A rich maple syrup is cut through with chilli jam and a heavenly bacon butter that implores you to spread it evenly such that every bite has some, but yet also to concentrate it on a single bite such that you might fully experience its depth of flavour. We completely needlessly pair this with the frickles and the parm million layer potato, drenched in marinara sauce, pesto, and parmesan - needless but necessary nonetheless. For dessert, the zeppole, fluffy Italian donuts served with, in our case, one portion of strawberries, raspberries, whipped cream, and Italian meringue, and one portion of whipped marscapone, coffee syrup, and caramel, making a glorious tiramisu-esque concoction. My body absolutely crashed about 90 minutes later, but it was so worth it.
We’ve been on something of a kick on the Lonely Islands-associated stuff. This doesn’t hit the heights or have the consistency of Seven Days In Hell, but there’s enough fun moments throughout to keep it fun.
A film designed to be watched accidentally on Film4 at two in the afternoon on a bank holiday with frequent commercial interruptions. But we watched it deliberately on Plex with no ads at all. And, you know what, it actually is quite a lot of fun.
Still watching
A film in which, within the first five minutes, my secondary school is lauded as a bastion of academic excellence and my university is derided as barely worthy of Oxbridge’s castoffs. But oh how brilliant.
David Lynch season at the Watershed, having just finished a rewatch of Twin Peaks S1 & S2 (and Alasdair’s first watch through). The underlying horror of the series dialled up to 11, with very little in the way of comic relief (minus David Bowie’s brief Louisiana accent). I realise now in retrospect that I should have watched this before The Return, but here we are.
Still playing
Too much seeing them now, not enough don’t.
It is a bank holiday weekend - no, better, the Easter bank holiday weekend, an extra day on top of it all - and Alasdair has had a very important week of having a major job interview, and that is something to be celebrated and rewarded. And what better celebration and reward than good food? We’ve yet to pay a visit to Pasta Ripiena this year, and their lunch deal is insanely cheap for what you’re getting. Three courses, £26, let’s do this. Alasdair has his own specially prepared vegan menu, and I am slumming it with the normies. A beef crudo bruschetta sets the tone, beautifully seasoned with a hint of horseradish, the parmesan shavings doubling down on the umami rather than trying to counteract it. For my main, a casoncelli of venison with a peppercorn sauce, with some dried and pickled porcini mushrooms setting it off nicely. I barely have the self-discipline to wait for the inevitable slice of focaccia being offered up for sauce mopping, but I try. For dessert, a mint panna cotta with confit of rhubarb - elegant and simple, necessary after all of the above. And then, for some reason, an espresso martini on Good Friday - it’s what he would have wanted.
Still watching
Celebrating Alasdair being a grown up and having a job interview, we go for a drink at our new favourite bar, Spirited. Despite the predominance of whiskey, our choice of tipple is their espresso martini, which is one of the best in Bristol. It doesn’t quite match Fauzy’s, but you’d be a fool to set that as your aim. It’s a cosy little spot, and a delight to have just down the road.
Watched as a palate cleanser after Blue Velvet - undiluted Lynchian nonsense in the most fun way.
The first in a series of David Lynch films at the Watershed. They’re all so young it’s like watching Muppet Babies. A masterclass in having to just roll with the dream logic of it all.
We have an embarrassingly small budget for a team meal at work, but the beauty of being a manager is that we’re double counted - I get to take my team out for a meal, and in turn I get to be taken out by my manager for a meal. The system works. So the CDI leadership team heads out to the pub that is a four minute walk from the office, to sample the £12.79 lunch set menu. It is exactly what you could expect. It’s fine. It’s fried. It absolutely goes through me. Beer battered mushrooms to start; beer battered halloumi to follow; and a thankfully un-beer-battered apple pie with custard for dessert. It’s all adequate, but it’s a nice catch-up with everyone, and it was a couple of hours not at my desk. That’s a win for a Tuesday.
I’d forgotten literally everything about this, and it’s an absolute delight from start to finish. Occasionally dips into the sadly prevalent American thing of “let’s not bother writing this, let’s just improv”, but obviously with a lot of the musical elements, it has to be quite tightly written for the most part. As with Seven Days In Hell and Tour De Pharmacy, I don’t inherently care for “fun celebrity cameos!” but the sheer number and quality of them is overwhelming, so crack on.
Still watching
Still watching
Making the most of being near London, as I do, I’m able to fit in a quick lunch with Andy before my train back to Bristol. With the constraints of “being done by 2.30” and “next to either Kings Cross or Paddington”, Andy goes on the hunt and finds us Hoppers, which he’s been to once before. It’s a flying visit, so I don’t get to fully sample the menu, but dive straight in with a black pork curry and a titular egg hopper. They are not particularly up front about the spice level, and that’s not a problem per se, but oh boy did it hit me when I wasn’t expecting it. Lovely! But unexpected. The pork was beautifull tender, and the curry itself still flavourful betwixt the heat. A thicker curry than is maybe scoopable by a light pancake, but that’s my problem I suppose, at the end of the day. We have enough time, amidst an always lovely catch up, to have a Watalappam pudding, a caramel-y, coconut-y, bread-and-butter pudding-y concoction, with a candied nut and coconut cream.
Whilst briefly back in Harpenden, Mum and Dad suggest breakfast out in town, so why not. We go to their new favourite caff, where it is evident they are regulars from the welcome they receive. I am not overly hungry, so I have a toasted tea cake, which to be fair is very good, the right amount of fruit, lots of butter and jam. It’s not quite a greasy spoon, but it’s also not posh, which is a nice change in Harpenden.
Somehow, despite having just done a full tasting menu, Milly and I could do with something… chocolate-y. Luckily, we know Italian Bear is open late and is literally just around the corner. I am not as foolhardy as I was the first time I came a few years ago, so do not order both a hot chocolate and a dessert. Instead, I go for the pancakes, three of them, each with their own milk, dark, and white chocolate drizzle, topped with whipped cream and strawberries. They are - inevitably - sweet, bordering on the sickly. This is not a bad thing, but I have a high tolerance; others might not be so lucky. It could do with a little more lubrication, a certain clagginess of the combination of a scotch pancake and melted chocolate, but still. Small complaints. It is delicious, and just hitting the spot.
One of my favourite London secrets is Carousel, a wine bar nestled away on Charlotte Street which upstairs is its own thing, but downstairs acts as the host for weekly guest chef residencies from across the world. It’s a favourite of Milly’s and mine, and an ideal fallback for when we can’t think of anywhere else we’d like to go when catching up. This time: Andy and Tiff from The Catbird Seat, a 20-course tasting menu gaff in Nashville, TN, presenting a cut-down version of their menu with a mere 7 courses. It’s phenomenal from the off, with a selection of snacks including a walnut cookie (that looks like a walnut!) filled with chicken liver paté and a blackcurrent jam that from the first bite tells you what you’re getting tonight: in good ol’ US of A fashion, this meal is going to be in your face. There is no room for subtlety here, you are getting big, bold, punchy flavours. But what saves this from getting tired is that there is variety in just how each course is punching you. The smokiness of the bacalaito, the wonderfully dense salt cod fritters; the citrus of the blood orange granita topping the oysters; the hot sauce cutting through the foie gras and cheese tart; the umami of the pork loin balanced by the richness of the whey sauce and roe; the creaminess but lightness of the Pimms and rhubarb sorbet. The treat of Carousel is that it’s all being plated in front of you at a giant kitchen island, and that Andy and Tiff are coming around and having a chat with you. They are genuinely interested in how you are finding it and happy to talk about what’s going on behind the scenes. Throw in a wine pairing for me and some soft drinks for a recuperating Milly, and this is the ideal backdrop for a good old catch up - and hopefully for many more in the future.
My friend Mahoney introduced me to Man/Woman/Chainsaw with the statement/question of “I can’t tell whether they’re actually good or not?” before inviting me to go see them at Rough Trade last year. I understand the confusion - they are every young Windmill scene with overwrought vocals and a violin player, abominably young, and with the rich scent of privilege behind thmm. But they are very good indeed. I massively got into their EP after that gig, and have been very excited to see them again since. So I find myself coming to London for the occasion. Put it this way - this gig made me genuinely wonder whether it’s even worth going to shows any more, because I fundamentally hate modern gigging. The screeching teenage girls, the middle aged men trying to film the whole show from the front row, the kids trying to mosh to music that should not and indeed cannot be moshed to, the constant talking - it’s all awful. So that this gig is still an early highlight of the year says something. They play with such intensity and cohesion on stage, it’s quite something to behold. I hope that for their debut album they can afford the production values that songs like Grow A Tongue In Time and EZPZ deserved but didn’t quite receive on the EP. They lack, on record, a heft and an atmosphere that elevate them live. Get Up And Dance, a currently unreleased song, could be huge if done right, as could they as a whole. I can’t wait to be moaning about paying 40 quid to see them at SWX in five years time. First support act Expiry are fine if unremarkable, but Dog Race are a deceptive sight to behold. The lead singer’s voice and performance are not what you’d expect of her, but it’s quite arresting.
Dad, for some reason, suggests grabbing a pizza when I get back from Bristol because, and I quote, “Mum will be out doing ballet” and that is reason enough. Zio’s is a comparatively new (by Harpenden standards) pizza place on the corner of Station Road, and I recall having had it as a takeaway some time ago when returning home. We dine in, with a beer and a pizza, nothing fancy. I have a pizza with buffalo mozeralla, which is certainly well-apportioned, toppings-wise, but to the shame of its structual integrity. The problem with adding buffalo mozerella is that it doesn’t melt at the same rate and therefore adds moisture and unevenly distributed heft. The dough itself (in the Neapolitan style) is a bit yeasty, a bit bland. It’s not a bad pizza, by any means (is there any such thing?), but I’ve had more fulfilling ones.
Oddly without viewpoint (I mean, other than “man shooting other man is bad”) or motivation.
A bafflingly low production value documentary that somehow seems to have taken pride of place in the Netflix algorithm. It’s not uninteresting, and I suppose it is to the film’s credit that it doesn’t drag the narrative out beyond stretching point. And, you know what, sure, why not, I’m happy believing that’s a real portrait of Shakespeare, screw it. Just, yeah. How did it achieve such prominence?
Still watching
Last watched, as I recall correctly, on the tail end of a bad cold quite late at night at the Showcase a couple of days before the end of my last proper term of uni, 9 years ago. It holds up, even accounting for the deep pang of nostalgia for my peak months. The push and pull of what’s actually going on is played beautifully, the casting is bang on, and even if the tension is not necessarily the same on the sofa as it is on the big screen, it’s still formidable.
Still reading
The day after the work social, we have our own little Thunderball team meal - the sun is out, the skies are blue, it is all together too warm. We originally intend on going to Squeezed, as is the consensus amongst the group, but that is unexpectedly closed. We pivot, as all good agile scrum teams do in the face of adversity, to Salt & Malt for some classic Friday fish and chips. The 7 person order is complex and inevitably takes a couple of corrections to get everything right, but in the end we are sat by the harbour and all enjoying ourselves. A large cod and chips for me, with some tartare sauce and some mayo, and it’s just a lovely time. I feel like I’ve had better chips from them before, but no complaints. We head off for a stroll and an ice cream, in the knowledge that work is paying in both time and money. Cheers, HCOCTO.
It is time for our long-awaited first big work social of 2025, and it is to Flight Club we return for the first time in a few years. I remember it as being really good fun last time (the origin story of the baby guinness becoming the HPE house drink), and it is moreso than I recall. Admittedly, by the time the food comes out, I have already knocked back a glass of white and two salted caramel espresso martinis, so, you know, factor that into my judgement. The food is not quite a matter of quantity over quality, but my god there is a lot of the former. It just keeps coming out! Platter after platter of bruschetta, and falafel & hummus, and pork belly, and cauliflower tempura. Then the pizzas! All of which are fine, even according to my correctly snobbish Italian team mate. The desserts of macarons and brownies are a tad underwhelming, but none of us are particularly mindful at this point. I move onto the water quite early, as it is still a Thursday, but even before my second drink I committed a semi-major faux pas, so here we are. Would it be a work social without that?
Still watching
This was fine! Things happened, the occasional competent joke was made, the music was good enough!
God I cannot wait to be back up at the Fringe again. This is a lot of fun - it captures well a lot of the ups and downs of the Fringe, and the five comics that Laws follows here span a range of familiarity for me, from “never heard of” to “have been drinking with until 2 in the morning”, so it’s lovely to see a bit more of that.
More to the point - just, go to the Fringe. Go to the Fringe and see five shows a day and give generously to the Free Fringe buckets and find just how much is out there that you didn’t know existed. It is the best thing i the world.
Also, of course my friend Morgan turns up for one scene and manages in that time to get his shirt off. Fair play to the lad.
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Ok, but why?
I have successfully project managed getting us in and out of the IKEA storefront getting the things we went in for, and very little extra, in under 45 minutes, with minimal scope creep. This is rewarded by getting lunch pretty much the moment the IKEA café switches away from breakfast. What else could I have but the meatballs, complete with mash, gravy, peas, and lingonberry jam. Plus, y’know, some garlic bread. And some Daim cake. And some whipped cream. That all comes in under a tenner and is all actually quite good. I feel nostalgic for my one holiday to Stockholm having the real deal of the meatballs, and for the Mallorcan holidays where Daim cake was in ready supply, and isn’t that the sign of good food? Just ask Proust.
I swear I will be going to other gigs this year that are not the band Divorce. A quite last minute waitlist ticket from DICE means I’m going into this with a spring in my step, which is quickly unsprung by the crowd around me, most noticeably the guy who insistently filmed 2 minutes of every song, which… I’m not the guy who complains about how you should “put your phone away and live in the moment”, I take a few photos here and there, but this guy was whip-panning around the stage like he was Damien Chazelle, right in my eyeline the whole time. I genuinely had to move for the encore. This should nominally be about the gig itself, so let’s move on - they’re really great musicians, who are playing very well in sync, and clearly having fun with it. The whole of the new album, plus a few others, which means all the quiet bits are also nicely represented, harmonies and all. A big response to Checking Out as the final song of the encore, and the roof could have been taken off. DUG are exactly what they appear to be as a support act, leaning much more country, but are remarkably personable and I’d happily go see them again in the future.
Look. Listen. I have no problem with vegan food. I order it, I eat it, I even cook it. But this was… disappointing. Nestled away on East Street and picked to meet our friend Jenny and honorary nephew Coby over lunch, VX is a proudly vegan café with vegan fast food. I went for the breakfast burrito, which nominally had some sausage in it, but I barely reached the point it was buried in there because the beans and the cheese was so offputting that I was really pushing through. The chips were oddly seasoned and the mayo - which, given we have pretty much nailed vegan mayo as a species at this point, shouldn’t have been the problem - was adding a weird tinge to the whole thing. Stick to Oowee Vegan for your vegan fast food needs; I know I will.
I try not to eat just before doing a gig, and as such am always thrilled when a) a venue does food and b) I am on early enough that the kitchen hasn’t closed by the time I’m off. Both conditions are satisfied at The Greenbank, getting to gig with Alasdair and Jordan Brookes. I go for a classic margherita pizza, and it is fine. The cheese is more elastic than flavourful, and it’s still a bit molten, but I enjoy it in the post-gig buzz regardless.
Consistently funny throughout, but I forgot we only lasted one film in the LEGO Movie franchise before the stop motion realism was dropped.
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It’s our second anniversary! We choose to celebrate at Bulrush, a long favourite of mine and a new experience for Alasdair, and I think the first time we’ve gone together to a Michelin starred restaurant in Bristol. It is a pure delight from the off. As with all good elevated dining, there are the most complicated snacks you’ve ever seen in your life, and when the first thing you eat is a savoury carrot XO donut, I mean my god. An eight course tasting menu, spanning asparagus, plaice, and a beautiful scallop. The “main” course, as it were, is one of my favourite things you get at places like Bulrush - one key ingredient prepared five or six different ways. In this case, venison, done as steak, sausage, tartare, and more. Served with a black pudding danish no less! I overindulge and go for the optional cheese course, served with a PX-infused date chutney and some honeycomb, and by the penultimate bite of my petit fours madeline, I am stuffed. The non-alcoholic drinks pairing is a treat alongside this, with highlights being the rosé cordial and the non-alcoholic espresso martini, which Alasdair describes as being effectively a Michelin star milkshake. As if that’s a bad thing. An absolute treat.
A hectic Saturday morning in town and I am absolutely knackered, and I think in the moment that the answer is food. The harbourisde market is in full force (if slightly relocated due to the renovations on the fountains) and I capitulate to Gurt Wings. I eschew my usual (loaded tater tots) for just some chicken tenders, which are much bigger than I anticipate. I am defeated easily and early. They’re fine, but it’s all too much.
The dog was a very good boy, yes he was, yes he was.
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Eating at OPPO for the first time this year. I don’t care to get into the argument whether Detroit pizza is really pizza - at the end of the day, it’s dough and it’s cheese and it’s some kind of sauce, and why can’t we all just get along? I do like the Barrelhouse’s magic mushroom one, which has no tomato and is suitably doused in balasamic glaze, which I pair with a slice of the classic pepperoni, with a garlic and dill mayo. I do miss when they used to have the Tuesday deal, not least with the inconsistent but always appreciated act discount, but we move.
A lot of time for this - quietly understated, and Ronan is as good as ever. Love the hair colour as chronology device, whilst still leaving a decent amount of ambiguity up to interpretation.
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Does not feel its runtime (a compliment!). It’s a whole load of stuff thrown at the screen and a good amount of it sticks.
I am having a stressful time at work and Alasdair spots the Instagram story from Tess that there’s Friday evening availability. What a lovely way to end the week at my favourite restaurant in Bristol, maybe the world (and, I suppose I should add, my favourite person). It’s the kitchen table menu, of course it is. One of the many things I love about BOX-E is, having been an uncountable number of times, getting to taste the subtle differences that Elliot applies to his favourite bases. It wouldn’t be BOX-E without some hake, but seeing exactly how he’s done it this time (berlotti beans, salsa verde, and a lovely bit of pickled fennel) is the treat. I indulge in the wine pairings (it’s Friday after all) and it is a wonderful evening of de-stressing.
Our friend Hugh, bored in the absence of Emily being in Andover, texts to see if we fancy the pub. We do! But, dilemma - we have been napping, rather than making dinner. So to Hen & Chicken we go, where we will be able to both go to the pub and eat some food. I go for what I had at Christmas, the parpadelle with venison ragu, and it is once again quite nice. I also go for the brownie, which is very “gastropub brownie”, for better or worse. In other words, I am reminded that I can do better myself, but the price I pay for not having to do so is this.
We kick off 2025 in gigs quite late in the year! I first caught Divorce supporting Everything Everything last year, and was quietly captivated. They are back now with their debut album and here are a few songs from it, supposedly stripped down but it’s the whole band with all their real instruments - not even a reduced drum kit in sight! All My Freaks is the energy highlight of the thing, but it’s all good fun. A quick chat in the signing and I’m off home at a reasonable hour - god loves an in-store.
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Rewatched for the first time in quite a while - still a big fan of a lot of it, even if maybe not as enamoured as back in 2014.
Hmm. Was hoping for more, but fun in its own way.
Rewatched at the Watershed post its big win, with Alasdair. I think the way it bifurcates is beautifully done and adds a remarkable amount of heft to the final scene. Ruined by George Ferguson’s wife sat next to me talking all the way through it.
We bravely set out as early as possible on a Saturday morning (around 11am) to Stokes Croft so I can buy myself a new guitar - suffice to say, this is not a common occurence. But if we’re going up all that way, we might as well make a morning of it and get breakfast somewhere. There are many options, but we are gamblers and decide to see what happens if we chance our arm at The Crafty Egg, known for its interminable brunch queues. Luckily, as we are just two of us, we skip past the large (and now pissed off) large group of presumed students who have been clearly waiting some time. I am going hard today - straight into a massive chocolate milkshake and a “Meaty Poutine”. They do, bless them, try to garnish it with a few chives and miscellaneous green stems, but that’s very much trying to make the essay longer by changing the margins. Sausage, bacon, cheese, fried eggs, and a homemade brown sauce get thrown together into a skillet with some roast potatoes, with a side dish of just gravy. It’s all a lot, and I do not finish because I can feel my arteries close in on themselves. The potatoes aren’t quite cooked enough, which makes it a bit tough to get through, but the condiments of the sauce and the gravy are wonderful.
Watched at the end of a very long, stressful week, and felt all the better for it.
Kind of dramatically inert for a lot of it, as you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t, not really, but maybe?
A last minute cancellation of OPPO means 1) Alasdair and I have a new spare evening, 2) we need something to eat because we would have eaten at The Barrelhouse, and 3) I’m on the wrong bus. All of this can be remedied, though, by going to Lucky Strike! Clever us. Lucky Strike was, if I recall correctly, originally a cocktail bar which then did a joint pop-up with the folks from Tomo No Ramen - a good start. At some point earlier this year, that collaboration ended (amicably, by all accounts) but they continued serving ramen. It seems an identical menu to when we went under the Tomo regime. Who am I to argue. This time, though, I go for the chicken katsu and fair play they’re nailing it. The sauce is the perfect thickness and spiciness, the breading on the chicken falls off in just the right way. A bit overloaded on the pickles, but that’s by the by. I’m a tad less impressed by the chocolate mousse for dessert, served with a blood organge compote and sesame tuile, but I have very high standards for that. A perfectly pleasant change in plans.
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Won me over eventually, at the point at which I just decided to stop caring to try to track every bit of detail and just let it wash over me instead.
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I have had a varying relationship with Six By Nico over the last seven years. Back in Edinburgh in 2018, in only its second outpost (before it had lowered itself below Hadrian’s Wall), I was enthralled. The concept was simple - a themed six course tasting menu, changing every six weeks. And for a mere £28! I mused that if they’d open one in Bristol, I would probably go every six weeks just to check out each theme. Well, many, many other outposts later, they have finally reached Bristol. In the meantime, I have been a few times in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and London, and the Grace Dent review for The Guardian (“the Pizza Express of fine dining”) lives rent free in my head. I now treat it as an experience rather than a meal. Inevitably, for the Bristol opening, they are doing The Chippie, which I have now had simply too many times, because it’s their go-to when opening a new one or they’ve just run out of ideas. It’s interesting that it has changed subtly over the years, but not by much. It’s, yes, very much the Fisher Price version of haute cuisine - you cannot move for espumas and foams and gels. It’s, as a result, fine. The food prep exists on a conveyor belt in a way that is trying to ape the precision and reproducibility of Michelin star cooking but ends up closer to a McDonald’s assembly line. They’re not convincingly on top of Alasdair being vegan with the snacks, which is concerning to begin with but settles once the first courses come out. The thing is this - I don’t know how well Six By Nico can survive Bristol. The price is no longer £28, it’s £44. They’re now much bigger on the up-selling, with more snacks, add-ons, optional courses, cocktail pairings, etc. If I add in the cheese course for £9, that gets you to seven courses for £53. For 2 pounds more, I can go to BOX-E, arguably one of the best restaurants in Bristol, and have the same courses but immeasurably better, more interesting, and made with love and personal care. The same is true for any number of other places. All in, with the snacks, extra course, and the cocktail pairing (fair play, surprisingly strong), you’re knocking over a hundred quid. Will I be back at Six By Nico? Sure, why not. The mood might strike some time. But 24 year old Sam’s vision of collecting every theme like they’re Pokemon feels a very long time ago indeed.
Inevitably remarkably one-sided, but a perfectly serviceable mid-budget drama.
Really liked this for the majority of its runtime until the epilogue which really rather soured me on the whole thing. Unlike the rest of it, it was showy for showiness’s sake, and completely self indulgent, which you’d almost be able to get away with if it wasn’t after 3 hours of the rest of the film.
One of the places where I absolutely know my go-to order and I have no intention of changing it. A trip to the pub with Matt whilst Alasdair is away to catch up on our respective work troubles, whilst we enjoy admittedly over-priced 2/3rds (or, I do, as Matt is driving) and for me, the loaded chicken fries with gravy. The things are drowning in it, and I love it. The chips are sufficiently crisp by themselves that they are not overly soggy-ed by the gravy; they are generous with the chicken, meaning a plentiful ratio; the gravy is hot enough to melt the cheese; and the spring onions on top genuinely do add a little something, a crunch, rather than just being garnish. Long may this continue.
You know what, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It’s fun to look at, but it’s all empty calories.
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Solidly good fun, moreso when it’s just enjoying the premise rather than getting bogged down in the details.
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Suffers a little from “The Zone Of Interest syndrome” - it feels like a lot of the rapturous reviews (and just look at the distribution of ratings on Letterboxd) are conflating being good and being important. It is at least more narratively compelling than Zone, but come on, this is not the 100th best film ever made just because it deals with a historic atrocity.
Sue me, I like Sorkinesque harried backstage “before the big show” drama
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Having absolutely no particular interest in the veracity of this as a representation of Bob Dylan’s life story, I enjoyed this. It left me wanting to actually go and listen to his music, so that’s a win, and Chalamet is typically strong. Elle Fanning takes the cake, though.
Not as bad as everyone else says - if you think this is the worst film you’ve ever seen, you need to watch more films. But! That doesn’t mean it’s good! Or should be nominated for Best Picture! Quite the surprise to me that the least explicable musical moment in a film where a song about gender reaffirming surgery is performed in a Bangkok clinic with the lyrics “from penis to vagina” is that, at one point, a swing version of Supreme by Robbie Williams features heavily.
A celebratory sending off breakfast for Clo as she embarks on her indefinite travels around South America and wherever else she finds herself. I tell myself on the way in that I’m not having anything big. This is a lie - I end up with the full English. It’s actually quite a good one, in the pecking order of things. Black pudding is present; tomatoes are not. The bacon is proper streaky bacon stuff; the sausages are actually meaty. I could have done with a few more beans, but the hash browns are top notch. It’s a good, solid breakfast, and there’s nowt wrong with that.
Clo is throwing it all in to go travelling indefinitely, and for some reason she is very keen for me to make it to her leaving drinks with her friends. I return from the theatre in London at a reasonable enough hour (thank you Elektra for being a one-act-er) to pop in at least for a bit. I am not drunk enough to stay for long, but too tired to get drunk enough to stay longer, so I order me, Clo, and some of her friends who are near the bar at the time a mix of baby guinnesses (me) and tequila (Clo). I vaguely dance for a bit, and then make my leave. Clo’s friends are all thrilled to meet me and have apparently heard so much about me, which is genuinely touching. It is nice to meet them too.
Hrmm. I do enjoy this, for the most part. I think there are a lot of interesting ideas in there, the use of dangling microphones and FX pedals adding effectively annotations to the text, the half-singing/chanting nature of Brie Larson’s delivery, the rotating stage design. I don’t, though, think it necessarily exceeds the sum of its parts, nor are those ideas necessarily well linked to what the play is trying to say. Not well versed in the play, at times I am just having to vibe out whatever’s happening and hope it will all make sense in the end. It’s a staging that is trying very hard to hit you on a gut level, and it does manage that in a way. Brie Larson is excellent, as is Stockard Channing, duh. I can imagine that, were this a two act play, the audience return rate would be interesting to watch. I think, in the end, I enjoyed it as an experience, but not quite as a play.
As someone who actively avoids looking in a mirror if they can help it, this.. this was a difficult watch at times. Profoundly affecting, and a real measure of Lynch’s ability for self-restraint.
It’s fun, in retrospect, watching the three of Coogan, Bryson, and Winterbottom figure out what would become the cornerstone of The Trip in realtime.
(Absolutely no recollection of having watched this for a second time in like the third week of uni, according to Letterboxd)
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Considering I am in Zara’s on average four times a week getting a hot chocolate to take home with me, I very rarely stop in. But Ruth is around and we’ve got time to get coffee before it’s time for her to head back to Manchester, and I can sneak this in in a work morning. I have my standard, a dark mint hot chocolate (complete with marshmallow, obvs), in a beautiful ceramic mug that you just don’t get the benefit of when taking it to go. We have a good catch up over the state of work, and part ways knowing that she’ll have to come back next time she’s in Bristol, and that I’ll have to come back tomorrow.
My friend Ruth is briefly back in Bristol and is taken with exploring North Street more now I’m down here, so Alasdair and I invite her out to Cor for the evening. Alasdair spots the person who hired him for his communications job in healthcare working as a waitress, and so the tone for the evening is set. As Cor has a strong vegan menu, and as it’s a small plates/tapas place, it’s up to Ruth and I to share. I guide us through some Cor classics (the lemon cannelini beans with caviar, the potatoes with café Paris butter) and try some new options (the crisp celeriac with polenta mash, a stunning savoury goats cheese canele), before being too full to really eat much beyond the dark chocolate truffles for dessert. Lovely to have such a place a 2 minute walk from the house.
Suitably interesting, if mostly for the guided but light touch questioning that prompts the direct narration from John himself. I love how much he loves new acts, to be fair. A really interesting moment where he takes against, instinctively, an artist self-describing as “queer”, and watching David Furnish explain it is, hmm. Yeah. Fascinating.
Broadly readable for the most part, but with a real tail-off towards the end. Never fully convincing from the off, though - perhaps a problem with being involved in the stand up industry, the set-up, characters, and overarching narrative don’t really ring true. Yes, there are terrible men in stand up (and, to be honest, a brief moment where I wondered whether one of the characters was an avatar for a specific one I know), but this reads too closely to a fanfic of what it must be like from the outside. There’s an amount of fiction-as-wish-fulfillment in it, every character too broadly drawn and every plot contrivance too perfect. I’m no one to suggst that Raeside isn’t allowed that for herself, but it doesn’t make it interesting. A shame.
We’re doing the Watershed’s seasonal Valentine’s Day pub quiz tonight, so I’m here a little early to grab a quick bite to eat. I am not feeling a burger, I have been metaphorically burnt by the fish and chips too often, and I’m more hungry than just some chips. I try, for the first time, the penne puttanesca here, which is perfectly adequate. I do think it’s obscene to charge £1.90 for cheese as an add-on, though. I do really like the Watershed - I used to describe it as my favourite place in Bristol - and the food is normally anywhere from good to slightly better than good, and I’m aware that’s damning with faint praise but here we are.
I must confessed I missed the apparent virality of The Feminist, the opening short story in Tony Tulathimutte’s debut collection, but I can’t say it surprises me in hindsight. It fits in that Cat Person vein, something that allows everyone to confront the horrors of straight white men online whilst patting themselves on the back for being better than them. It’s interesting, then, how Tulathimutte uses that as a seed for the remaining stories, each building on that in some way thematically and narratively to implicate all of us in the same base, repulsive instincts. There’s some formal experimentation, which is fun, and one story (no spoilers) has such a beautiful example of a narrative trick that I genuinely laughed out loud on a train at the gumption of it all. Very excited for more.
In an effort to avoid the rain and to kill time between dinner and a show, the nearest thing to the theatre is Ole & Steen. I have a peppermint tea because sometimes I don’t have a hot chocolate, and a chocolate mousse-y cake-y thing, which to be fair is quite nice, if way too rich (admittedly after a quite rich dinner, so maybe that’s on me).
On the gold-paved streets of London for Stage/Fright, we return to BAO Soho, this time knowing it is sensible to have a reservation in advance. Somehow, though, this doesn’t really improve our experience. We’re still left queueing behind people who are trying to walk in; once we’re in, we’re forgotten about for a good 15 minutes without even water. I know it’s not normally that bad, we’ve been before, but it’s a shame. To some degree, I’m repeating my order from last time, finding a range of the bao buns and some of their other small plates. The food, distinct from the service, is very good, and it does almost make up for it. The baos themselves are, as you’d hope from the name, the highlight - a confit pork and a beef short rib both really hit the spot, the fried chicken a bit let down by the (presumably) less traditional sesame bun but still delicious. The pig blood cake with egg yolk is delightfully difficult to eat as it disintegrates, and the sweet potato fries with plum ketchup are deceptively moreish. Honestly, though, the highlight is the pineapple float, with a salt crystal laden Yakult foam. That’s the thing that stayed with me most from our first visit, and I’m vindicated in having it again.
A precision-strike on the late millenial class, so targeted in its observations but so general in its reach. I am almost entirely the people described here. I enjoy the trappings of what I imagine high taste to be, the minimalism, the combining technology and creativity, the wanting to move to Berlin (which, I genuinely nearly did circa the age of 27), and all of that. The social circles that expand and contract, the places and times spent with those circles, the nagging feeling that there must be more meaning. Latronico takes all this and pours it into a never-named couple living initially in Berlin and then moving around, the prose efficient but still drolly humourous. Beyond the generational satire, though, is a small but magnified observation that has stuck with me since: I miss when Instagram was just peoples’ lunches and holiday photos. When I deleted Facebook and abandoned Twitter (2017 and 2022, respectively), I retreated into Instagram because it wasn’t full of links to doom-laden articles, videos of atrocities, political snark. It was about the people underneath. And now, as I idly doomscroll through Instagram stories, it’s the same thing. Maybe something will replace it. Maybe it’s a sign of great privilege that I can live my life not having to care on an intense level about these things going on in the world around me. But in just 120 pages, Latronico absolutely nails the kind of person I am and my cohort is. (Sidenote: in its opening chapter, Perfection uses a special edition of In Rainbows on vinyl being on display as a specific marker of a certain type of person/couple, but it must be assumed he is thinking of the bright, vibrant colours of the standard edition, rather than the greyscale charcoal drawings of the limited discbox edition. I hate that this is a thing I am commenting on here).
We seem to basically rotate between Pazzo, BOX-E, and Bianchi’s for major days like New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day. This time, it’s Pazzo’s turn to host us and my god have they put together a set menu that is simply banger after banger after banger. A classic Bianchi’s Group aranchini as the snack, with wild garlic and pecorino. From there, the taleggio rarebit, so beautfiully rich but cut through by the shallots. The piece de resistance is the spaghetti alfredo with a guanciale and garlic chicken Kyiv (which, fair play for putting this much garlic on a Valentines menu), but let us not underappreciate the innovation of the tiramichoux for dessert, draped in a coffee caramel sauce. We are seated within earshot of the bar, and Dom is getting his hands dirty, so across the room we call for drink recommendations, and end up with a custom cocktail for Alasdair - god bless that man. Round it off with an espresso martini and some truffles, and what a valentine’s night.
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A quick bit of sustenance during the Lupe pub quiz - I go for the chicken karaage loaded waffle fries. They are fine! The chicken is mouth-roof-cuttingly hot, and the waffle fries then collapse a little under the weight of it all, but it does the job well enough.
So preoccupied with how to stop Donald Trump and the far right from stealing an election, they forgot to consider that people might just vote them in anyway.
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On the whole enjoyable, leaning more into the drama than the previous series, but with some wonderfully comic moments throughout. It’s not that I dislike Lenny Rush elsewhere, but yeah, you really remember why he’s hitting it big when you watch him in this. I think I still don’t fully buy some of the character motives, which is difficult when, as mentioned, it starts to care more about plot than comedy, but it just about holds up that end.
Rewatched as a light thing to have on in the evening with a bad cold, and this was just the thing. It’s adorable, and it’s such a shame that Pixar’s three-film late resurgent period coincided with a global pandemic and thus shunted straight to streaming. This, Soul, and (to a slightly lesser extent) Turning Red deserve more credit.
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The first First Friday Social at work for the year. A smallish turnout, but a perfectly sized one. We play some pool, I have a couple of pints (but not my usual Lilley’s mango cider, because for some reason I think it’s just going to be too sweet for me tonight), and make my way home at a reasonable hour (if later than originally planned).
Had my doubts before it started - Amanda not being my favourite character in Motherland - but this so quickly falls into the strengths of the original that you could easily have kept the title. Siobhan McSweeney is so very good as a stand-out in an excellent ensemble, and Peter Serafinowicz throws the whole thing into a new loop. I would watch this for years.
A warm refuge from the cold after wandering around the Bristol Light Festival. Some old favourites (fried chicken with a beautiful soy and honey glaze, katsu sauce-d fried which looked initially stingy on the sauce but soon revealed a deep well underneath the surface), and this time trying the Korean corn dogs, doused in chipotle mayo and a sweet ketchup. The doriyaki, with a green tea filling and cherry couli, hit the spot for dessert nicely.
We managed to get through most of the Bristol Light Festival installations this year, and we managed to do so together, which is a change on last year. I’ve broken out my Sprocket Rocket camera for the first time (and have yet to get them developed, so we await with baited breath) but do also take some photos on my phone. There are a lot more music-based ones this year, which is fun, but are also more enclosed, which means I am forced to reckon with the general public’s unerring sense of selfish lack of self-awareness. Alas. The creatures outside St Mary Redcliffe are fun, as is the squidgy black hole creator in Broadmead. It’s all good fun, and you get some photos out of it. I don’t think it’s ever really much more than that, though.
I wouldn’t change it, lord no, but my god the score is so hilariously 90s.
More two-episode miniseries, please. Or, I mean, just make it a film? I dunno. The kind of show that is absolutely reliant on the performance of its leads, and luckily both Coogan and Walter show up. Walter especially, given the long list of previous Thatchers. I don’t know if it really says much about the rise and fall of long-form political interviews on television, but it’s entertaining to watch another Thatcher downfall.
Incredibly horny, to the extent that I don’t think it really does what it wants to do.
Our friends Charlie and Milly are doing the sadly inevitable Bristol comedian thing of becoming just too good and in demand for Bristol and upping sticks to London. They’re having leaving drinks, and we get to do so in the games room at the Volley, including getting to watch Emma Hughes’ unhinged attempts at playing shuffleboard.
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Grabbing a quick bite after walking Alasdair over to a gig on Wapping Wharf, I have to pick and instinct takes me to Pigsty for the first time in just over five years. I figure I can get in and out in 20 minutes, a theory which is confirmed when I enter to find I am literally the only customer at 7.30 on a Thursday night. Oh boy. The Proper Cow burger lives up to its name - the bacon is a tad much and too crispy (from someone who really does prefer it crispy), but the duelling chimi mayo and chipotle honey ketchup call it a hard-fought draw, the patty itself is rich and deep, and the fries are nicely seasoned.
Surprisingly charming, given how much the trailer for Memoir Of A Snail has rankled me.
I know they’re obviously distinct things, affecting different people, but oddly I think Nickel Boys did this more effectively.
Oh man. This had been on my list for a while, but moved considerably up in response to starting Neverland by Vanessa Kisuule which was not quite the book I was expecting - whilst that more used the idea of discussing the art vs. the artist as a launch pad for talking about how hero worship takes on a life outside of the art, I wanted to read something more specifically delving into art vs. artist and what is to be done about, as Monsters’ subtitle asks, great art by “bad” people. My investment in this: I have eschewed art I loved by people who turned out to be bad. I am also a big fan of someone whose name gets thrown around a lot in this arena and whose guilt I, to be honest, think is questionable but nonetheless feel a certain discomfort around enjoying as a result. Dederer is a fascinating, thoughtful writer who takes neither prisoner nor easy answer. Monsters is a book of much nuance, so to distill it would do it a disservice, but I think it’s fair to say that it tips its hand towards the side of the art still being worth enjoying, though not without caveat. There’s a really interesting conclusion to be drawn around how this fits with our inescapable model of capitalism and consumerism, which has left me with a lot to think about. The whole thing delves into a rich tapestry of different approaches, different types of “bad” people, and the idea of the stain that spreads out wider and backwards, re-colouring the art in unimaginable ways. It is hard to watch Manhattan in the same way as it is Annie Hall. It is difficult to listen to The Suburbs in the same way as you did before. That doesn’t, I think, necessarily make it wrong. So why do I still cut out some art but not others? Why does it feel more right to want to not consume JK Rowling or Louis C.K., compared to others? I have spent so many years thinking about this, and whilst it doesn’t necessarily crystalise every thought I had, (and while it does crystalise a whole bunch of other thoughts I hadn’t begun to consider) Monsters is as comprehensive a text as you could hope for, written with grace and humour. A high recommendation.
Still reading
Fair enough, I was tearing up at the doorman phonecall. It is not, in the scheme of things, much consolation, but it is still nonetheless a relief that through him and the unseen veteran reporter, there are men here who, y’know, care. Shouldn’t have to be noteworthy in 2025, but here we are.
Just as bad as 7 years ago! Baffling at every single possible opportunity. Alasdair asked me to pause it at 30 minutes in because he was convinced it must somehow nearly be over. But no.
Raph and I go for a quick drink after coffee at the Bristol Loaf, because for some reason he wants to come here. I have never felt less welcome in a pub! It’s incredibly intimidating being two outsiders in a pub blaring Marilyn Manson at four in the afternoon on a Sunday, one of which (yours truly) ordering an orange juice. I shan’t recount Alasdair’s anecdote about it - that’s his to tell.
Time to catch up with Raph for the first time since Christmas, swapping the traditionally belated presents. I have a perfectly ok hot chocolate and a quite nice croissant, and that’ll do fine. I’m normally a bit more adventurous with the Loaf (their crumpets are excellent), but we got there just as the kitchen was closing, so alas no. Another time.
We braved Cribbs on a Saturday in January and true to that experience, we had a Burger King in the food court. Where 20 years ago I might have told you that Burger King was superior to McDonald’s, that has long since passed - the burgers are practically atomic, the chips few and far between, and this time when I chose to splurge beyond a basic combo meal, they couldn’t even correctly give me onion rings. Ah well.
A quick bite to eat before Alasdair’s preview as part of the (don’t rant, Sam, don’t rant) Bristol Comedy Festival. I do like a banh mi; I’m not an expert, but I don’t think fried chicken is necessarily the most traditional filling - but still. It’s good stuff. It’s well-adorned with veg and chilis, but it’s over-stuffed and the bread is a little too tough, or at least insufficiently brittle, to avoid the filling going everywhere upon bite. The fries a good, if a little overly paprika’d.
If this had been made 10 years ago, everyone would be describing it as Allenesque and I do find that funny. A really lovely set of performances, in various levels of subtlety and broadness, bringing the most out of a strong script and inspired direction. That last shot!
It’s fun and not without its charms, but it never quite clicks in.
As the rest of it does, admittedly, get stale, Dictionary Corner remains arguably one of the best showcases of comedians who don’t quite make sense in the panel show format. Take, for example, Ewins - he needs the tech, that’s his USP, and that would never fly on Mock The Week or WILTY or anything. But a space of just “you get three minutes with no constraints within the format”? Perfect. Him, Campbell, The Delightful Sausage, ABK. And, of course, the show’s poet in residence, Dr. John Cooper Clarke.
Big bold dancey stuff, I can see why she’s supporting Caribou, and that alone has tempted me towards getting a last minute ticket. Initial standouts: Broken, Onwards, Combat
It’s fun and not without its charms, but it never quite clicks in.
I was doing so well, but I was so hungry as I returned from the Watershed that temptation overtook me. The Mucker remains one of the best burgers in Bristol (and, believe me, I’ve checked). It’s the bacon and caper aioli that does it, so much so that I get extra on the side for the ancho fries. The lemonade always hits the spot - the classic for me, although it was a treat to overhear multiple people question what echinacea lemonade is. I remember when these burgers were impossibly wet to eat; how they managed to reduce that whilst keeping it as delicious is a scientific feat of our age.
Take the post-rock backing of something like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky, chuck some Grimes vocals on top, and you’ve got what feels like a very deep pool to dive into and bathe in. Initial standout: Sungazer, Milk, Kenopsia
Still watching
We pop in for a quick drink as part of Maddie’s goodbye celebrations. I get as far as ordering a Jubel Peach before Alasdair reminds me that it’s still Dry January, so a ginger beer it is. I know I am normally the first person to argue that actually gentrification isn’t all bad, but this is one of the few examples where I do think we need pubs like the old Colosseum. Now it’s just any other pub. Bring back the Queen fruit machine.
Need to listen to this again to get a better impression. Initial standout: Irreversible Damage
The perfect film to watch on a TV with motion smoothing turned on and your boyfriend’s mum talking over.
Still reading
Big fan of having them see The Importance Of Being Earnest at the theatre. Otherwise, wonderfully Wilde.
An odd set of spoken word dotted around this, and tonally different to what I (very vaguely) remember of them in the Louisiana like 6-7 years ago now. Good for them! Initial standout: Night Of The Skinwalker
Feel like I got scammed when I realised Them There were completely uninvolved in this. Some good gags dotted throughout.
Grabbing a quick bite to eat after the train up to Birmingham. I note they’re now selling the MOTH cocktails, but alas, Dry January. I have my normal order - the Shackmeister, a perfectly unhealthy cheeseburger with a very nice, creamy, tangy sauce and crispy shallots; the crinkle-cut fries; and a lemonade, a little less nice than usual. Equally, the burger a little overdone on the edges. But, did the job and hit the spot and I’d prefer it to a McDonald’s any day.
Always nice to have new EITS, even just a soundtrack. An interestingly wider palette compared to their album work. Initial standout: Memories
The usual haunt for the OPPO new year’s drinks, so I pretty much uniformally am on the mocktails. Definitely feels over-priced for what it is, and the ambience is, eh. But it’s tradition, now.
A suitably cheap set menu for a section lunch at work. I play it safe with what I assume Bella Italia can not go too wrong doing - garlic doughballs to start, a chicken milanese for the main, a brownie for dessert. They are all the Fisher Price versions of those things - recognisable enough for a child to point to, but uninspiring.
Milquetoast landfill indie that is mostly about their mates. Initial standout: Perfect Me
Complicated feelings about this one! About pretty much everything other than the cancer. Does at times feel like the trailer existed first and someone thought “that looks great, flesh that out another 1h45 and we could have a film on our hands”.
Not the platonic ideal of my standard order of a house burger (today, a slightly over-toasted bun and under-chees-ed patty), but it’s always something of a treat to kick back on the sofa with this before a film. The chips are surprisingly good, or at least hit some specific spot. The construction of the burger appears to be different every time, so it’s nice to add a frisson of chance into the mix.
It does feel somewhat tossed off, and yet he does seem to care more about this than The Strokes. Still, a couple good songs. Initial standouts: 7 Horses, Spectral Analysis
Still reading
Nasty, brutish, and oddly compelling. Initial standout: OILED ANIMALS
Complicated feelings about this one! About pretty much everything other than the cancer. Does at times feel like the trailer existed first and someone thought “that looks great, flesh that out another 1h45 and we could have a film on our hands”.
Still watching
Begrudgingly, I quite enjoyed this. Amiable Sunday afternoon fare, and honestly amazed it wasn’t longer, which is a higher compliment than it might seem.
Took about an episode to ramp up, but it grows from a lot of deliciously written lines, to wonderful scenes, to tightly drawn and lived-in characters. A charmingly bleak little thing.
Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age (31) but while the writing is still absolute dross, I didn’t mind it so much? I mean, still terrible.
Vapid, faux profundity with an affected voice. It’ll keep the Idles crowd happy. Initial standout: Love
Soothing little puzzle game, wonder if it’ll be any more than that by the end
Solid if occasionally stolid album 20 years in. Initial standout: Build It Up
Really liked this. The use of first person POV is handled incredibly deftly, with the right level of subtle and unsubtle cues to indicate transition in viewpoint. Some really fascinating choices in service of deeper story telling (older Elwood’s “perspective” being more removed and how that came to be, the use of doubling up moments without cutting but with different outcomes) that I’ll be thinking about for a while.
A voice where I can’t tell if I like it or not and won’t be able to for some time. Initial standout: No One Else
Oh this is horrifically addictive and I am going to have to be very careful about how much or little I play this.
Initial standout: Alone
I mean, sure. It’s All Born Screaming but she’s singing in Spanish. Initial standout: Tiempos Violentos
I remember vaguely being aware of WHY? from an Acaster pre-show mix. I have now actually listened. Initial standout: Later at the Loon
An idea from a pub conversation that has got massively out of fan. Stupidly fun. I forgot how intense Adam Riches’ eye contact is. Enjoyed how much John Kearns enjoyed Alasdair enjoying a line about the agricultural revolution. Spent the whole show very conscious that Ed Gamble and Rosie Jones were in my eye line on the other side of the stage.
Early (comparatively, to what I listen to), Steve Albini-produced post-rock, lovely for reading to on a train. Initial standout: Sea Above, Sky Below
There’s a moment in Hollywoodgate where the Taliban laments that if they had had all these resources that the Americans had had, they would be ruling the world right now. The remaining 90 minutes somewhat casts that into doubt.
Replaying this for the first time in years, this time on the Switch. I forgot how quickly the death count racks up, but amazed at how much muscle memory I’ve retained. Wonder if that’s true for Super Hexagon.
I think it must be about 7 years since I last watched this, and I love how happy I am every time I remember a character. Much soapier than I remember, and I don’t mind it! The music is gorgeous. David Lynch passed away between us starting to (re)watch this and finishing this season, so that’s added a whole new weight to it.
Swedish power pop in the vein of The Beths (no bad thing). Initial standouts: Headache, I’m So Sorry
Watched in 35mm at the Watershed. Gorgeously shot, fascinatingly monochrome throughout in different ways.
Surprisingly vital for this stage of Jack White’s career, I can see why the buzz about the cramped gigs last year was what it was. Initial standouts: Bless Yourself, What’s The Rumpus?
Gone are the heady early days of the long queues to get in here - it’s not too late in the day and it’s comparatively quiet. Killing time between being in town and Nosferatu at the Watershed, we figure that Tonkotsu’s boast of the importance of the 42 second ramen means we should be in and out quickly. Less so than you’d hope, but here we are. It’s still up there for me (although not the best in Bristol), with a delightfully creamy base, and an extra egg for ol’ me. Chicken karaage on the side is beautifully done likewise. We don’t have time for an ice cream sando, but next time, next time.
Maddie is trying to fit in as many social engagements as possible before leaving for Seattle, and I am delighted to abet. We go for lunch with Alasdair at Oowee, all of two minutes down the road, which is dangerous when there’s an £8.95 lunch deal and the frequency with which I work from home these days. I try not to make it a Friday regular. Today, though, I eschew the lunch deal and splash out on a Big Cheese - a patty and baconaisse-spread bun practically glued together by a mix of American and Swiss cheese (forever chasing that high of the original Moor Burger, Please from Burger Theory), with some Marmite waffle fries on the side. It is all too much, and absolutely cannot become habit.
Initial standout: Black Ribbon
I miss when Letterboxd wasn’t overrun by gen z
Still reading
Initial standout: The Birds in Birmingham Park
The annual tradition continues, thank you Mum. The platonic ideal was still the one like 4 years ago with a good short story, and I refuse to believe it’s just because I’m 31 now.
A cracking edition of this, to be fair. A good cast who enjoy the studio and can relax into themselves. Would I want a full series with them? Maybe not, but that’s what this is for.
Oh god, it’s still one of the best things on TV. Claudia Winkleman is perfect for it and I cannot believe the formula keeps working. The producers are definitely playing with the contestants’ expectations more, which is a lot of fun.
Happy new year indeed. Tell me more of the man who just had half a phone handed to him. 6 years ago I apparently wrote that this might be PTA’s most ambiguous film, and I think I stand by that.
Odd, almost Bon Iver-ian folky/autotune from Menorca. Initial standouts: Heu and M’agrada s’espigolar
I enjoy a café trip on New Year’s Day to walk off the hangover. This used to be Flour House as a staple, but now I live quite far from there, it doesn’t quite seem worth it. We strolled down North Street to take in the options and settled on Tin Can. And so 2025 begins with their house baked beans on toast, with added hash browns and sausage. I object - genuinely - to paying £3.50 extra for a single, solitary sausage, and it genuinely is not worth it. The sourdough toast retains just about enough bite post-bean-slathering, and it’s nicely topped off by the herb oil. This won’t - I hope - be the best thing I eat in 2025, but it’s a suitable start before an abandoned walk round the park.