Happy birthday to my blog and a Happy Christmas to you
It is that time of the year to remind everybody that I was clearly destined to be a journalist with a journalist attitude to deadlines, because my vow in the middle of 2002 that by Xmas 2002 I would have…
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…