Suits You

Match Of The Day. Broadcasting as living proof that you "are what you wear". Way more expensive than you should be. And shit.

Albion Beatnik

I've been meaning to write something about this place for ages, but for one reason or another never got round to it. Anyway, a visit on Saturday re-affirmed my resolution to do so. The Albion Beatnik is a small, perfectly stocked independent bookshop in the Jericho area of Oxford. A nice little street anyway, with good pubs and all that stuff, but the bookshop is really worth a visit. Big selection of Beat stuff, all nice US pressings, a really good poetry section, second hand books, good coffee and tea, and a real genuine bookshop owner as you'd want them to be; crazy long curly hair, glasses, air of easy intellect and love of jazz.

Nice.

West Ham and the Justice In Sport Quango...

...Just watched the highlights of the West Ham game. Have to say I feel sorry for the team and Avram Grant on the basis of what I saw. It looked like a piss-poor refereeing performance and pretty much a non-footballing performance from Stoke who, as well as overstepping the boundary from cynical into outright cheating on a couple of occasions, I don't remember seeing actually pass the ball TO EACH OTHER . ALONG THE GROUND, once in the whole segment.
Looks like the Central Authority For Justice In Sport has clocked off for the summer. And on their usual date as well, fellow Arsenal fans will no doubt have observed... still, they did a reasonable job this winter in Australia, so I won't begrudge them their annual March to August holiday...

Sondry Folk...

...this is a brilliant little website, which I urge anyone to visit. Literary ramblings, art, design, clothes. all that good stuff and written by some cool and interesting people. I've just come across this, but it looks very, very good.

They have also been kind enough to do a little piece about the Sideshow exhibition, which you can find here.

Strawweight

It’s not a weight you hear of much today
in fighting, since they closed up all the booths.
Gone like a day’s work, or an old folk song.
Once, amid the gaslights, Lonsdale Champions and
mahogany drawers full of dead butterflies
he’d netted and collected as a boy,
he smoked in pubs and learned the local songs.
Now he sits and waits for me to come;

To listen to his stories, make his tea
and hear about the gradual decline
from fast enough his fist blew out the lamps
to faculties eroded by some other folk process.
The morning came, we went to see a football match,
he could not sing, and twice, forgot my name.