https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002326c/the-outfit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outfit_(2022_film) Most of the action takes place in one night inside a tailor’s shop, which doubles as a stage, or in this case, film set. Chicago, 1956. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is an English cutter who runs a tailor shop in an area controlled by gangster Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale). Burling makes made-to-measure suits for Boyle and the well-...

Ask yourself a simple question. Would you rather be blind or deaf? We can’t really imagine it. But for most of us, the answer, I’d guess, would be easy. I’d much rather be deaf. I’ve only heard one guy say he’d rather be blind. He loved music so much the answer was obvious to him, too. Stuart Braithwaite is the lead singer of Mogwai. The band took their name from creatures in Gremlins but in China also means ‘demon’ (I think because I never...

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel Fleishman is in Trouble was an international bestseller. Long Island Compromise is her second novel. Awards and television series inevitably to follow. Grab your reader with the first line. It’s the kind of cliché right up there with the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Akner knows her readers will want something smart, bookish and literary, perhaps left-leaning. Aware of the paradox of what you’d need to...

Chapter Two – This question was: As you have reached, and are living out, your ‘over 40’ solo status in life, how has your perspective on singleness changed from what it was 2 decades ago? These are the stories of some respondents to a questionnaire around being single over the age of 40 as a woman. Respondent 1: Donna, 44, Christian, who has 100% support from her family and has been single most of her life. While I wanted to be married and have...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0022vjc/in-my-own-words-series-1-alison-lapper Alison Lapper: ‘The whole point about art is having something to say ‘I didn’t think art was about fitting in.’ Alison Lapper – an artist, a muse, a mother – explores her life through art and archive in this visually rich and emotionally intimate documentary as she emerges from the most difficult period of her life after the loss of her son Parys My name is...

WHY DON’T YOU switch off your television set phone and go and do something less boring instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Don%27t_You%3F https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/11/put-phone-down-habit-reading-books-english-oxford Smartphones aren’t as bad for you as smoking but are the reason our kids are intoxicated by their screens as glue sniffers. Most people in London know somebody that has their phone snatched from their hands...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023998/in-my-own-words-series-1-jackie-kay I was born around the same time as Jackie Kay. Like her, I wasn’t expected to live. I was brought home. She was given away by her white, birth, mother. Her father was Nigerian. She was put up for adoption. Her real mum and dad (Mr and Mrs Kay) already had a son. He too was adopted. She tells the story of how this happened. Her Glaswegian parents were told by...

As I sit here, in front of my screen, with the rain beating down outside, I feel a strong urge to register some reflection on my and all of our existences. The air is humid and slightly cold and there seems to be an energy in it - like a faint electric pulse. It's connecting everything. And even though I am tied to the mundane tasks of my job - writing code - which is something I have done for over 25 years now, I sense that there are epic and...

I’d déjà vu reading Into the Uncanny . I felt that I’d read it before. Then again, I often pick books up, read a bit and put them down again. Danny Robins admits to being one of the lucky ones. One of the chosen. He was kicking around doing nothing very much with his life and trying to write a play about ghosts. Like me, he’d spent lots of time reading books about paranormal phenomena. Testing themselves by trying to bend my spoon by rubbing...

Well my holiday is over. Had to go to office today to get gloves for work and tell them why I was sick again. I'm sorry I had covid a week before my holiday. I still went to work before I went away so they can't say I made it up. I was on a half day tomorrow and now I am on all day. But I really don't mind. I will see a few people that I have not seen for a while. I do a different round now so I don't see these clients much anymore. They are...