Magnificent! Always have a massive soft spot for stuff that just goes as metal as it possibly can. Life’s too short for irony

My 8 year old is loving the Ottoline books by Chris Ridell at the moment. Ottoline and the Yellow Cat is the first in the series. Crimes solved, bears in cupboards, small hairy men from Norwegian bogs. All you need really!

You could have given me a hundred guesses as to the track list for an intro to VU and a I would have not guessed that

Artists pour their hearts and souls into an album. The idea that you can ‘get it’ on a single listen is an absurdity.

Was listening to the reissue of the first Slomo album

Like a happier alternative to Ian Sinclair’s map of Hawksmoor churches

Checked out a nearby record shop while I was there. Specialises in 50s American rock and roll and Finnish rockabilly. Based on the scale of the collection Finnish rockabilly is a surprisingly fertile genre

Yeah, they had to cut chunks out of the story to make it less bleak

I have always wondered whether they asked or not

I need to get another bottle! They had it in my local bottle shop last time I was there

Artwork there by the wonderful Mick Turner. Guitarist from Dirty Three. It’s a crop of the album cover for Horse Stories. It’s also a wonderful beer!

You eventually end up with a really robust mental map of your local area where you know the distances of all the extra loops and turnings to get you back to your front door at roughly the distance you were aiming for

There’s a really nice accompanying album of music to go along with it by Teho Teardo.

It absolutely blew me away. Left me genuinely unsettled by the end