Saturday February 04, 2012

Pleasures of….January

30 January 2012 // Pleasures

by Neil Ansell. The sun is bright and the sky is an unbroken wash of blue, but there is a hard bite in the air. It is one of those clear crisp January days, and the night had brought a deep frost that the sunshine is still working on. In the lee of the hawthorns [...]

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Pleasures of…..August

15 September 2011 // Pleasures

By Jasper Winn I hadn’t counted before just how many years I’ve been coming to this village in Andalusia. But, by going around on my fingers a fair bit, I’ve just worked out that it’s been twenty years since I first walked the sand track into Sanlucar de Guadiana. Since that first visit the track’s [...]

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Pleasures of….July

6 August 2011 // Pleasures

Jeff Barrett Books: Waterline by Ross Raisin The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan (“Spiky roadkill blemished Brian Clough Way. They drove out from under the weather, the clouds like blue ink from a black ink pen, petroleum rainbows climbing up the spray”) But my favourite is City of the Dead by Sara Gran, a thriller, [...]

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Pleasures of…July

3 August 2011 // Pleasures

This month, Hannah-Lou tells us how it was…. On the second of July my husband and I find ourselves in a grubby nightclub called Stix in Kirkcaldy, on the Northern shore of the Firth of Forth. We’re trying not to talk too loudly in our English accents, as the rowdy crowd have just stood up [...]

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(More) Pleasures of….June

5 July 2011 // Pleasures

this time from Jeff: This is the month that I’m supposed to be telling you all about the fish that I caught on my return to the riverbank after the three month closed season but I’m afraid that story is for another day, simply because I have yet to make the return. And you know [...]

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Pleasures of… June

5 July 2011 // Pleasures

Jonny Trunk Emails from Jonny Trunk never fail to hit the spot. The last one – offering up the Stand By For Adverts/Barry Gray compilation his label Trunk were releasing – asked you to send cash along with a crude drawing of anything from a Gerry Anderson telly show to a Colonel Des Buttocks somewhere [...]

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Pleasures of….. June

1 July 2011 // Pleasures

by Tracey Thorn. It’s Fathers’ Day, and my sister and I have brought my Dad on a little holiday, down to Salcombe in Devon. We’re staying at a boutique hotel on the beach. The guy who carries our bags says that Rod Stewart was here last week, but he may be pulling my leg. On [...]

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Pleasures of…..May

1 June 2011 // Pleasures

by Travis Elborough. May Day. A holiday and a distress signal. Were, I found myself wondering recently, the pagan rites of this ancient seasonal celebration so distasteful to this isle’s Christian usurpers, that they maliciously set about repurposing its name for maritime disasters and, later, free falling airplanes? Probably. Edward Woodward as Sergeant Howie, predictably, [...]

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Pleasures of….April

28 April 2011 // Pleasures

by John Andrews The Pleasures of an April in Arcadia have been many and almost overwhelming. This year’s explosion of blossom made the winter a memory once and for all. Down every lane, along every avenue in London and especially outside John Betjeman’s house on Highgate West Hill you could see it by day and [...]

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Pleasures…

10 April 2011 // Pleasures

Not technically a Pleasures of March as most of these things are around this weekend… Robin Metronomy ‘The Look’ Don’t know much about this band, got sent the new record ‘The English Riviera’ and was drawn to this track – a kind of end-of-the-pier Bontempi soul record. The video features some really mental looking puppets [...]

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