A corner terrace painted all over in bright abstract designs.
Yeah, yeah, I… I see what you mean, it’s just… and please bear in mind I’m speaking here as your estate agent… this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I said you might want to look into getting it painted before putting it on the market…
#E15 #ForestGate #Leytonstone
... whereas I'm still excited that my Motorola has a colour screen and lets me download apps... but there's no doubt it's getting on a bit now...
I think the plan is now to keep it available, but obviously it's up to (filmmaker) Lucy Dawkins, and circumstances may change... I don't think there's any official "limited-time" aspect to it, though...
Then open your eyes again, or you’ll miss the film. And apologies for the weird smell, but the Tropic was like that. [3/3]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pRv...
@yespleaseprods.bsky.social
#SarahRecords #MySecretWorld
or how it was possible for a whole scene to function and flourish without computers, the internet or mobile phones (clue: stamps, fanzines and National Express coaches), then get yourself some popcorn, close your eyes, breathe in, and imagine you’re in Bristol’s Tropic Club in 1987. [2/3]
More Sarah Records stuff, I’m afraid, but this one’s a biggie… because My Secret World, Lucy Dawkins’ 2014 film about the label, is now available to view in full for free online. So if you’ve ever wondered what all these people I keep talking about looked and sounded like, [1/3]
“In the songs’ combination of joy and scepticism, heady complexity and hits-the-first-time riffs, I found an art, and a worldview, that looked like a life I might live.” [3/3]
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/ap...
#SarahRecords #Heavenly
while welcoming everything shy and pretty” – I’ll take that!), and finding hope and inspiration in the whispered fuck-you of unbowed, collective defiance when the world seems like it wasn’t made for people like you. [2/3]
“The first time I saw Heavenly play, in 1991, I wasn’t sure what I’d seen … I figured out days later that my life had changed.” So writes @notquitehydepark.bsky.social in this beautiful piece about Heavenly, and Sarah Records (“They figured out how to copy punk rock’s defiance [1/3]
Thanks so much for writing such lovely words about Heavenly (and Sarah), Stephanie... and, rather belatedly, for the Blueboy piece that you link to, which I'd never seen before!
That's really lovely. It's at times like this I regret thinking "Does it matter if all the reviews say the Motorola's camera's not up to much when it's so much cheaper than an iPhone or Samsung....?" when I bought my mobile phone...
A goalkeeper warms up under the sprinklers at Brisbane Road.
One of the most important parts of the pre-match warm-up is making sure that your goalkeeper is properly watered. This is East London. Come on you O's. #leytonorient #lofc
Apparently I won't get any tea if I don't repost this from yesterday about Lucy's Very Important Shakespeare Discovery; and I've actually got an excuse, as the video of her walking and talking is now on YouTube, so all you have to do is click the link. Comment#1 is a complaint about the music. Sigh.
has made a nice five-minute video about it all, in which Lucy both walks and talks in an unnatural manner, and the link to that is below (you'll need to scroll to the bottom of the page for the video). Yes, Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. That one. [4/4]
#Shakespeare #Blackfriars
Which is why there’s been a press embargo until today. And why we’ve been taking calls from the BBC, CNN, Associated Press and others all week. The Times Literary Supplement has the full story in a big in-depth feature, and… I wouldn’t expect you to read that. Luckily, though, King’s College [3/4]
written by Kirby Grip and Snorkell Parker, aka @lucycmunro.bsky.social and her brother Duncan, and, after all these years, Kirby’s finally done something else worth talking about: she’s worked out where Shakespeare’s London pad was. And if that sounds like quite a big thing… well, yes, it is. [2/4]
Each issue of Smoke, a London Peculiar – the magazine I used to do with @juderogers.bsky.social – had a comic strip featuring the Astonishing Routemaster, a superhero who, having been hit by a radioactive number 12 bus, now had the strength, speed and intelligence of a number 12 bus. It was [1/4]
So, here’s something utterly magical I never thought I’d ever see; and the Sweetest Ache caught me a bit by surprise with it at the Lexington the other week, so I was holding my phone in my left hand while juggling a pint. Less blurry versions may well be out there, but that’s not really the point.
heckled while supporting Bikini Kill at TJ’s in Newport: “Less structure in the music, please!” After which, I think, there was some sort of fight. TJ’s was not a venue for the faint-hearted. The faint-hearted went to Moles in Bath. [2/2]
#SarahRecords #Newport #BikiniKill #RiotGrrrl #HuggyBear
A poster on a railway platform advertising a music festival in Newport headlined by Goldie Lookin Chain.
A sign on the side of a building saying “Darling Buds Nursery”.
[On the way home from Cardiff last week…] Goldie Lookin Chain, yay! Still doin it. Other Newport bands, meanwhile, seem to have opted for generously giving the latest generation the benefit of their experience at the post-C86 popface. Back when we were living in Bristol, we saw Huggy Bear get [1/2]
The facade of a red-brick Victorian municipal building with a huge grey hotel complex immediately behind.
I mean, it’s very admirable that you’ve kept the original facade and all that, Cardiff, but we can’t actually see anything out of the bottom three windows…
#Cardiff
A statue of Aneurin Bevan on a pedestrianised shopping street in Cardiff. The text on the plinth says Aneurin Bevan, 1897-1960, Founder of the National Health Service.
Also in Cardiff, a statue of a man without whom some of us might not be here. Maybe one day there’ll be a statue of Wes Streeting on Oxford Street. Or maybe there won’t.
#Cardiff #AneurinBevan
from Cardiff Castle. Apparently, they’ve been filling the city’s children with a sense of Munchean dread for nearly— ah, no, hold on… I meant joy and wonder. Sense of joy and wonder. Sorry – I misread the plaque. [2/2]
#SarahRecords #Cardiff #CardiffAnimalWall #Heavenly #EvenAsWeSpeak
Carving of a wolf who’s seen things no wolf should see.
Carving of a bear who’s seen things no bear should see.
Carving of a seal who’s seen things no seal should see.
Carving of a hyena who’s seen things no hyena should see.
Excellent as Heavenly and Even As We Speak and the other bands were, there was obviously more to my weekend at @walesgoespop.bsky.social than music. I was particularly taken with these, for instance: animals in the throes of existential despair, clinging to the parapet of a wall just along [1/2]
I worry that my more musical posts mean nothing to a lot of you… so here’s Even As We Speak at @walesgoespop.bsky.social last Saturday with their gorgeous version of a song that even people who know nothing of Sarah Records might recognise…
#SarahRecords #EvenAsWeSpeak #NewOrder #WalesGoesPop
... whereas I just thought: well, it's big, but it's not as big and Iraq, so... which is possibly less scientific...
(I also suspect that taking so long to reply is not in the spirit of social media, but I've been away...)
A clip of the wonderful Even As We Speak being wonderful in Cardiff last night... as they will be again tonight in London, I'm sure. Tickets still available if you're within striking distance of the Lexington... The Sweetest Ache are supporting...
#EvenAsWeSpeak #SweetestAche #SarahRecords
Farage/Reform/Robinson mob is lacking (even if they did muster far less than us). I’m more inclined to go with Jarvis Cocker: “We won’t use guns, we won’t use bombs, we’ll use the one thing we’ve got more of – that’s our minds.” Even if it does mean I’ll now probably be denied entry to Kent. [3/3]
i.e. much more than Tommy Robinson got. The police said 50,000, but admitted it was hard to say, and… people arrive late, come and go. That said… I’m wary of trying to reassure and rouse by quoting the usual Percy Shelley (“we are many, they are few”), as it isn’t really numbers that the [2/3]
A protest march on Lower Regent Street. In the distance are the Crimean War Memorial and the Duke of York Column, and in the foreground is a placard saying Immigrants Make The World Go Round.
If the state of British politics is making you feel depressed and helpless, then you might like to know that these photos were taken a couple of hours after the front of the march had reached Whitehall, so my gut feeling is that the turnout was possibly upwards of a quarter of a million, [1/3]
