Much like Starmer, I swear MM is just waiting for someone to put him out of his misery. He can't be enjoying the gig anymore - just clinging on so he can be 2nd longest lasting FF leader.

/ nad his fingers were mostly moving too fast to match the visual to what I was hearing.

Strangest thing; as far as I could see from the back, mainman Kawabata was playing a left handed guitar right handed; in other words, adapting a left handed instrument the way most of us lefties grapple(d) with right handed instruments. I wasn't close enough to see if it was restrung or not/

Bad picture of the phenomenal Acid Mothers Temple at the Brudenell tonight. Ears ringing like Quasimodo has taken up residence mind. And that's with protection.

I spent a few days in Cluj a few years back. A city a little bigger than Cork, a little smaller than Belfast, 20+ tramlines, trolley buses, loads of green space and cycle paths...

I had a couple of months' physio from a similar injury. You don't even do anything exciting to get wrecked.

A nation of slumlords.

The people affected most acutely by the housing crisis are the ones least likely to vote, or even to have a vote. Which doesn't excuse political parties from representing them. *Looks leftward meaningfully*

I bought a plant today. Seems I will garden my way into retirement. If I start saying 'you know Nigel has a point' then impale me on rake.

Further back I thnk? 2006, from memory...

I once marked a student essay that began 'Plato sat in his cave in Ancient Greece and thought about morality' - and this was pre-ChatGPT.

I've been reading a lot of 'whither Ireland?' commentary from the 80s/90s and from left/ right/ centre, usually deploring the loss of our soul to consumerism and pop culture. There an unmistakable moralism; whatever it is that's wrong with Ireland, it's your fault.

Barry Andrews - Rossmore Road YouTube video by Pete Crunchy

Ah.

Don't remember this at all, weirdly, though I must have heard it at the time.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hel...

Can't remember the line or the song title to search ...

XTC?

I’m chronically early. My partner thinks that you score points if you are Right On Time™.

This is exacerbated at the airport by my general flight anxiety. I like to get there. Find my gate. Find a snack or bathroom (if necessary). If we pile time anxiety on flight anxiety, that’s too much anxiety.

Soft spot for MR thanks to @deaconajw.bsky.social
Once half wrote a spoof paper on Modern Romance, Cultural Appropriation and Postcolonial Pop, but couldn't keep a straight face/ pen.

Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees 'Unplugged' - Geoff Deane - 2013. YouTube video by Geoffrey Deane

Unplugged version below.
I went to gig in an artists co-op in Tottenham (!) a few years ago, and got off at Tottenham Hale, first time ever. Couldn't get this song out of my head, and consequently remember nothing of the show.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=91LC...

Dissenting vote for Saturday Night Beneath the Plastic Palm Trees.

In our next seminar on 20 April, Melissa Baird & Michael Kennedy (DIFP) will speak on:
‘“Agents from the South running around Northern Ireland”: Backchannel talks between
loyalists and the DFA in the aftermath of Sunningdale’s collapse’ All welcome! www.ticketsource.com/institute-of...

'held' obv.

I found it weird and a bit unsettling to work in the European institutions and have everything in English rather than French which would frankly make more sense at this point.

But I do love the way EU documents these days specify "use the correct spelling: Irish English not US English"

'Hamnet era'

Picture of dramatic clouds with a thin band of light

Lowering sky over Meanwood.

I've been help at gunpoint three times; once by thieves in my parents' shop, once by the British Army in Derry, once by armed police in London.

"Talk to them [the Irish] the Ambassador said, they are a friendly people. Well the hell they are. An occasional creature of great beauty and poetry; the others suspicious, crafty, greedy, stubborn, incurious and cruel"

Reanata Adler in Pitch Dark

'writing is thinking' - yep; students wo come to meetings going 'I know what I'm going to write'. No you don't.

See, we can have all the active transport infrastructure in the world, but unless attitudes change this shit will keep happening.

Ah, OK.

It's gone through numerous editions in English - I read it 40+ years ago, and I don't recall thinking the translator got the football wrong. Might be worth trying to dig up another version?