The Thursday quiz is back, baby!
This week – after a strike-induced hiatus – the Guardian Thursday quiz is back. And you get to see my dog Willow in a Christmas jumper, a lovely guest dog called Otis, lots of other cute animals, and there is…
Visiting Lost In Light in Shoreditch
I recently went to the Lost In Light exhibition in Shoreditch. It is five rooms of light and sound installations by Squidsoup in a sparsely furnished ex-warehouse sort of space on Curtain Road. You have to buy a timed ticket,…
Visiting the Museum of Brands in London
Occasionally I am convinced that time travel means that suddenly things that have never previously existed in our timeline pop up, and have apparently been here forever. That is how I feel about the Museum of Brands in London, which…
Thoughts on … Grand Theft Hamlet
Let us be honest, if you were not a keyworker being forced out of your home to do your job, we all developed weird hobbies during Covid lockdown. I can remember spending one evening watching someone do a fundraising stream…
Thoughts on … new Sky/EFL TV deal making Leyton Orient Saturday 3pm kick-offs an endangered species
I’ve been trying to add to the general joy of the internet by writing about positive things I have enjoyed and sharing things I’ve read that I thought other people might like. This one does come with a side-serving of…
52 things some other guy learned this year is always worth reading
Horseback raves, a programming language called Tabloid, the alphabetic order of your surname depressing your academic grades, and the ability to buy genuine human teeth if you so wish, you will find all of these things in Tom Whitwell’s always…
Thoughts on … 80s photography and the Turner Prize at Tate Britain
It is kind of lovely in a way to get to an age when all the things you grew up with are getting retrospectives, exhibitions, repackages, remakes and remodels, and I enjoyed this week The 80s: Photographing Britain at Tate…
![[The Cure at the Troxy]](https://martinbelam.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/600_cure_troxy-150x150.jpg)
A one-line review of every gig I’ve been to in November 2024
This monthly series is probably more for my benefit than yours, but maybe your interest will be piqued by one of the reviews. Maybe you’ll scroll straight past. Maybe you’ll unsubscribe thinking what did I see in this blog in…
How much internet ‘brain rot’ have I got to be able to write this quiz?
A little bit of bonus quiz action for a Monday. “Brain rot” has been announced as the Oxford word of the year, covering “overconsumption of material considered to be trivial or unchallenging” especially through endless scrolling online, or reading the…
![[Hugh Grant in Heretic]](https://martinbelam.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/600_heretic-150x150.jpg)
A one-line spoiler-free review of everything I watched in the cinema in November 2024
I’ve ditched the usual blurb about “not being a movies person, but anyway…” because since I started going to the cinema regularly in 2022 I’ve turned into the kind of guy who downloads the London Film Festival brochure and meticulously…