My son has decided that today is everyone’s birthday. Happy birthday everyone! (You still get your normal birthday; apologies to those whose normal birthday is today.)
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Just seen an emergency pull cord in an accessible toilet that was not only tied up, it was tied to the fold-down support rail so that folding the rail down would activate the alarm. I wish I was surprised.
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I bought All Day Long when it was published in 2015; I distinctly remember ordering it online with great enthusiasm following a recommendation from somewhere. As with all parcels, I waited impatiently for its arrival. I then put it on a shelf, where it sat patiently for eight years while I never quite felt in the mood to read it.
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Things could have been so different if only all the king’s horses or all the king’s men had had access to hot glue.
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My son is explaining the difference between the human Blippi and the cartoon one. He differentiates them as ‘the Blippi with blood’ and ‘the Blippi without blood’.
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Sussudio apt-get install earworm
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I’m constantly surprised by my brain’s ability to turn any detail of its environment into an earworm. Last night I had Nizlopi’s 2005 number one ‘JCB’ in my head and I’ve just realised it was because of this filename (the result of testing out the Raspberry Pi-based MIDI recorder I’m building for my wife’s piano on her performance of Ludovico Einaudi’s ‘Inizio’). Throughout the renovation of our house, I had ‘YMCA’ in my head. Eventually I spotted that this must be because of the Youngman-brand stepladder I was using. My belief that I have to much mental fortitude to fall for Derren Brown-style ‘power of suggestion’ conjuring lies in tatters.
The Long Take (Robin Robertson)
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This is an unusual book that feels like it shouldn’t be unusual. A long poem or verse novel set in the post-WWII USA, The Long Take is accessible enough that I can easily imagine a world in which it kicked off a popular interest in its form. Perhaps if it had won the 2018 Booker, for which it was shortlisted, this wouldn’t feel like the kind of thing only bookish weirdos with English degrees read, novels-in-verse would be less of a rarity, and I wouldn’t have found this one in a remaindered book shop at a knock-down price.
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Getting back into briefly writing about the things I read. This time, The City and the City. markstaylor.uk/books/2023/01/the-city-and-the-city-china-mieville
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The City and the City (China Miéville)
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I’m always delighted to approach books (and other works) with as little knowledge about them as reasonably possible. (If you’re the same, and you haven’t read The City and the City, then please forgo reading this post, which contains conceptual spoilers if not plot ones.) This novel, which sat vaguely on my reading list for some time until I received it as a Christmas present, occupied a middle ground: I vaguely knew the central conceit of its setting, but nothing beyond that. How delightful, then, to discover that my understanding was wrong. I had The City and the City categorised as sci-fi; I thought its twin cities Besźel and Ul Qoma occupied the same physical space through some quirk of physics or magic. The novel doesn’t outright contradict this, but it certainly doesn’t require it: the two cities, and the skin between them, are seemingly constructed entirely in the minds…
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The Hey Duggee! toothbrushing song must have one of the flattest view timeline graphs ever.