Tag Archives: this is the kit

ten things

when feelin’ alone’s just a point of view.

Copying that Ten Things thing I see on so many blogs these days. I’m always sharing stuff like this online – so, after all, why not collate it? Tangents mean some of the ten have ended up combined, but you’ll get the point. Rather than saying I’m going to do this weekly, I’m saying I’ll do it again when I’ve got my next ten [good] things.

ONE
If branding is inspired by the Mexico ’68 Olympics font, what’s not to love?

TWO-THREE
These mountain-scapes by Conrad Jon Godly. Chunky paint is my favourite kind of paint. And, while we’re at it, The Jealous Curator blog itself. As soon as I stumbled across it I thought: Damn, I wish I’d thought of doing a damn-I-wish-I-wrote-that kind of blog.

FOUR-FIVE
I have at least three things in common with Skye, author of From My Dining Table: fondness for prose, reverence for Italian cooking and, peculiarly, being a Latin scholar. Thanks to the Polpo cookbook I got for Christmas, I’ve already spent much of this year determinedly turning my hand to panino (pictured below), polpette and cichette, so From My Dining Table only compounds my longing [to at least pretend] to be Venetian. Also, the discovery that writer’s block inspired the creation of this blog has in turn jolted me into considering how I might better channel my creative output. Maybe I’ll get round to doing something about that (sometime soon).

SIX
Lily remembering her friend Peaches in this piece is too sad for words – except she somehow finds them. She still she visits me in my dreams. Often as bossy and rude as in life, but always hypnotic. Her visits are fleeting, but she always remembers to kiss me on the lips. And I stand feeling so tender with love, wondering if I should tell her that she’s dead. Always deciding not to, in my dreams, as it’s no good for us both to have a broken heart.

SEVEN
Like Desert Island Discs – but for books. If my Amazon wishlist was a shelf, it would be buckling.

EIGHT-NINE
If I’m to be found at Glastonbury, it’ll often be up at Avalon. This year’s line-up was announced earlier this week, so I know for sure I’ll be dancing to Rob Heron & The Tea Pad Orchestra. This Is The Kit are on the bill too, which is imbued with a kind of sadness for me. The last time I saw them was days after the Paris attacks, and knowing that I’ll feel less – terrified – this time around is imbued with a different kind of difficulty.

TEN
Finally, since I’ve listened to little else in the last couple of weeks, I give you this.

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food, life, music

i have what i need – and sometimes the wind.

Though I love London – and ardently – sometimes I feel like I’m getting it all wrong. Sometimes we’ll wonder where to go for dinner – and minutes, hours, or even days after that, we’ll still be stumped. I deliberate on decisions like this so much precisely because I don’t want to get them wrong. I have a list longer than I could show you with my hands of places I want to go, but in that moment, none of them ever seem to quite fit. Too far away, too busy, too expensive, too niche, too deep-fried. He wants bao buns, I want mac’n’cheese. Sometimes we’ll go somewhere off-list and it’ll be brilliant and after revelling in that for a while, I’ll feel despondent and defeated because it wasn’t on my list at all and how many other brilliant places are there that haven’t made it onto my list, that I might never uncover?

And that’s just the food. The same goes for the music, the art, the comedy, the views. Our city couldn’t be richer in it all and it’s exactly that which makes me feel, all too often, like I’m getting it wrong, looking the wrong way, missing a trick. But every now and then there are the long Sunday afternoons in the pub, where the lights are just right and the rioja just flows. When you step out into the cold to catch a gig and you’re so glad you did. When you glimpse a view by chance and you feel privileged to have done so. And so, below are some of the times we’ve got it right, in this order: Elvis Perkins at Dalston Victora | Sunday afternoons at the The Red Lion, Leytonstone | This Is The Kit at the Scala | reflections on the River Lea | Sunday roasts at the Hackney Plough, Homerton | John Grant at Eventim Apollo.

   

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