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Always amused by the requirement for the posh southern recorded voice at Leeds Station to pronounce Slaithwaite as some of the locals say it (Sloughit), though she is allowed to put all other Yorkshire names through the southern mangle - Huddersfield becomes Haddersfield, etc

Have people forgotten how obituaries work?

Merger of the Opulent Excess

A strange masterpiece, a brittle dance* on the edge of apocalypse. *can a dance be brittle? In this case, somehow, yes.

"The Hunting of the Snark" by Lewis Carroll has an uncanny atmosphere that I don't think could ever survive an adaptation into any other medium.

I call myself an unprofessional writer, and I think that is the most precise term for what I do.

Hatred kills your soul.

How is it possible for a perfectly innocent sentence, crafted with all due care and attention and checked over a dozen times during the editing process, suddenly to reveal at the very last moment before printing that it repeats a major word within two lines? How can it do this to me?

If you want to know what has been occupying my spare time for the past couple of years, here’s a clue….

In the age of AI, this sounds like a ludicrously high standard of original research

A trope is just a nicer name for a cliché

By the way, anyone remember Nicholson Baker’s 2001 book “Double Fold” which protested against the microfilming of newspapers and journals and other “ephemeral“ materials, after which the original hard copies were destroyed?

Always apprehensive about the weird sounds R3 presenters will emit when faced with European names, especially with "r" or "ch" in them

Where's the score of "Thespis"? (obvs) * see also: the original orchestrations of "Strike Up the Band" and "Let 'em Eat Cake"

Reposting this because I feel it is a public service to share it as widely as possible

Always startled to see Blue Boris in this one

I’m fascinated by the Watson/Holmes archetype, where Watson is a representative of the “ordinary“ person, in this case a slightly idealised version of the author; and Holmes is what can only be described as the Magical Other. It’s a double act that writers can still find inspiration from, I think.

“Too much talk stinks up the place.“ - Duke Ellington

I'm always baffled by people's tendency to get incredibly angry about tiny cultural details that have absolutely nothing to do with morality (e.g. wearing clothes "wrongly", using the "wrong" word or even the right word but pronounced or spelt with a difference)... except when I do it, of course.