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Losing the Thread of What is What

1. Talk about lists

2. Blind daffodils

3. Apologies for Easter

4. Spring tides

5. Seagulls down our chimney ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

its like a reduction of the week's conversations

So I ran in to my Mum's room upset: 'They're in the West Bank with Tanks again'.

There's nothing that makes it [Barr Cherryade] Cherry flavoured (its all undescribed flavouring). Its like they've taken Irn Bru and made it taste of something. It makes you burp doesn't it.

(Ideas For) A New FM Radio Station

Radio Rain: ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

I was discussing the pros and cons of keeping chickens in a communal Glasgow tenement backyard this afternoon and though neither side outweighed the other it turns out that it isn’t really in your own hands, whether you can have them or not, but instead it is up to your bloody neighbours. Chicken shit can be smelly but they are a very useful and often endearing fowl. So I got irritated, as you may expect, at the impossibility of a collective to challenge their comfort floodgates. ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

Here is a list of things I want to make: A steam box for bending wood, a foot lathe, a brick kiln, a lobster pot.

Here is a list of skills I want to learn: Coppicing, cutting and laying hedges, basket weaving, sausage & paté creation. ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

I’ve been on holiday again. Completely absent from what is usually my reality. And I didn’t even have to leave the city. It seems funny that you can vanish so completely from a place that normally seems so small, where everybody knows everybody and a day doesn’t go by that you don’t bump into an acquaintance or friend unexpectedly – typically when you are looking exceptionally rough and are in a hurry and probably in some sort of pain which makes your salutary smile look twisted and morbid hence deepening the sense of social paranoia that we all seem to suffer from. ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

The novel, Luicien Goldmann argued in his 1964 work, Towards a Sociology of the Novel (Amazon Link), should be considered in terms of the economic situation from which it emerged. He's a nice Marxist.

“The novel form seems to me, in effect, to be the transposition on the literary plane of everyday life in the individualistic society created by market production. There is a rigorous homology [structural resonance] between the literary form of the novel...and the everyday relation between man and commodities in general, and by extension between men and other men, in a market society.”

Well why not? It seems commonsensical that writers are products of their surroundings, as are novels.

Gone with the Wind, Hard-back, Macmillan 1936 (First Edition) and War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, Hardback, Macmillan 1942 Edition.

From the Logical Wisdom of Isabel

You had a scotch egg, I saw the wrapper, and Robbie wouldn’t eat a scotch egg, because he just wouldn’t do a thing like that. A girl came in and was very upset that we had sweet potatoes from Israel. And pomegranates. No they’re not, they’re amazing, they’re not stupid in Greece, they’re really nice. What if they’re not from occupied territory? Well you can’t, you can’t know. It's big, economy, maybe, but not the small people. Sweet potato farmers have to live, even if it is a country which is bad. It just says Israel, but I made a formal complaint about it.

This girl has come in – this soap, but it is an Israeli product – she’s complained about lots of things. She freaked about that as well, the soap; why does she have to be such a hypocrite; she ignores all the other bad things that happen in the world. It’s not my fault, give it a rest lady. The last time the shop tried to avoid all the Israeli products, other customers complained. I got confused, first I thought ‘this is wrong’, but I dunno. These pies aren’t really enough. Nor do I. Can't we just get drunk?

Ferret Comment: What a weirdo, what’s he doing? ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

We've given in and added a few nods to social networking (ironically choosing to promote a little on Facebook, when this week Google Buzz is the hot new thing.)

For a limited time (how limited is a total secret) you can purchase the whole of TYPE Review Volume 1 (that is our 2008/09 edition [RED]) for £10 (RRP £13, includes P&P to one UK address, International shipping extra). ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

For the past two months I have been slowly gathering the materials with which to hunt the vicious Signal crayfish, grey squirrel of our waterways, a scourge of riverbanks, fish stocks and native species of crayfish. To do this I have followed the instructions of George Monbiot, and last week I put the finishing touches to my free ticket to a meal. ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »

'Anne Huxtable waited here 8th Dec, 1952 for a friend who did not turn up'.

'David Williams watched the rain from here, 7th September 1979'

'Mrs Mary Howard adjusted her hat in the reflection in this window June 3, 1921'

'Nathan Walker walked past here 47 times during 1968 on the May 21, 1968 - he looked up'. ... there is more to this article, click to read the more »