I just listened to the Queen's Speech (for those foreigners out there - every year the Queen gives a speech that has been written for her by the government, announcing what legislation is coming up) and it was the same bunch of meaningless rhetoric, the re-announcement of stuff they have already announced, and total fluff that we've been getting ( Read more... )

I went to see Juno at the London Film Festival last night, having bizarrely been given the tickets at the last minute by my mother who had booked to go with a friend but then had to go Geneva for the week. Am hoping to see another movie with Dusty ( ) on Friday, but this was a good start to the festival season ( Read more... )

Well, am now firmly back in my usual places after a few weeks of travel and strange, chopped-up work and personal routines. Have tried to spend the last week actually doing stuff before work takes over again, so have met up with Dusty a couple of times (for an awesome weekend, then a couple of sneaky coffees) which has been stellar. Have also seen ( Read more... )

Ah, a good start to the day. It may be raining in Paris, the transport strike may mean that I have absolutely no way of getting to the station for my train home - but the Red Sox won to stay alive last night, and the Yankees are managerless. Ding, dong, the wicked Joe Torre is dead.

Hmm... inspired by Dusty, have gone a little bit overboard with the album pre-ordering from the States of late (is the side-effect of being stuck in Taunton, your classic English depressing small town, with only the internet and an overworked credit card to entertain myself). So far I have put in orders for:

- Say Anything, In Defence of The Genre ( Read more... )

Well hello there! I am back after a genuinely lovely few days in Greece with the brother (and the folks for part of it). The weather was perfect, the archaeological sites (which are the real reason we went, as the brother is studying them as part of his university course) were stunning and the whole thing was really relaxing. I’ll probably throw up ( Read more... )

Ah, Mr Journal, has been a while. I've been very quiet of late as I've been on work secondment to the Cabinet Office (part of the government over here) and mainly working out of their building where you have very limited internet access (great), mobile phones are blocked (greater) and you can't log on to wifi (greatest). So yes, contact with the ( Read more... )

Ah, I've been waiting for this for so long. New Jimmy Eat World single. "Big Casino". Album "Chase This Light" out October 16th. Finally have a copy using a friends US-registered iTunes account. And ( Read more... )

Hello all! Hope you are well and good. We are enjoying the bank holiday weekend here in the UK (we get today, Monday, off as a national holiday) and like many thousands of British people I took myself off to the Leeds leg of the Carling Weekend music festival. I've written long entries about the atmosphere and the 'lifestyle' bits of the weekend ( Read more... )

Have been listening to a lot of music this week, trying to give all the albums that have come out recently due care and attention, and there have been two that have come to really stand out from the pack. One of those is the Idiot Pilot album Wolves that I have written about before. It is inventive while still having great tunes, the lyrics are ( Read more... )