Where’s the July? - A monthly round-up

Now eventually you, er, might have, um sunshine in your, in your summer right?

English weekend morning rain. The thwarted promise, the sheepish sound of it on the window, the opportunity to lie there and watch it for a change, doing its small-handed work. But it’s supposed to be July too, you know, which does turn up eventually. Why’s it so sad-looking though when at late afternoon there are parts of your room only picked out by a faint sunbeam? Then it hits me, these Sunday strains resonate because the elements were already put together by Larkin:

The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s

Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely

Rain-ceased midsummer evening. 

What else is better in the world on a Sunday afternoon like this, a midsummer evening than reading?

This month’s newsletters

Boring!!! - why calling an artwork boring or slow is always a bit sus and how to objectively work out the pace of prose fiction, films, plays, mime recitals

Death is elsewhere - commemorating Milan Kundera and what he tried to do for the novel

Friends with the band - why kids start bands and grown-ups join choirs

Indiana Jones and the Eternal Digital Stasis - what if the real deeps we faked was the idea iconography trumps IP?

Ones you might’ve missed

Dropping bare acknowledgements - 🎵thank you for the pages, those endless pages at the end of most books🎵

Essays in other publications from the archive

A Supposedly Fun Film I’ll Never Watch Again - speaking of Spielberg franchises, speaking of Dr Malcolm in the subtitle

A short story for Sunday

Meaningless Number - and nothing but the tooth

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