Let's Count Our Blessings

Happy Holidays an' that. I hope Santa got your Christmas list OK. I can tick off a Black Cashmere Polo Neck. Still outstanding: hang glider, shark-proof dagger, box of Milk Tray...

I watched Quentin Blake's Clown on Channel4 and enjoyed Michael Rosen's thoughts on the original book in this blog. QB is brilliant (as is MR). A certain 10 year-old recently remarked, "He draws perfectly wonky". Indeed he does.

Alan Bennett's diary in the London Review Of Books is a tonic. The entry for 16th August made me laugh out loud.

Farewell, Jim McLean, former manager of Dundee United. I just read this funny, affectionate profile of him by Neil Forsyth. (Is it just me or could Jim McLean and Gene Wilder have been separated at birth?)

Jim McLean

Gene wilder

I've been very much digging these Soviet city photos by Arseniy Kotov. 

This powerful article by Ann Patchett is long - but once I'd started reading I couldn't stop.

I recently posted this festive vignette elsewhere:

A childhood memory. Midnight Mass, St John The Baptist, Uddingston. Some folk under the affluence of incohol would roll in from the pub. One year the line to receive the Sacrament Of Holy Communion was moving particularly slowly. A muttered voice from behind - "For fuck's sake."

Other stuff I've been watching: Home Alone; Home Alone 2, Gravity Falls and - whenever I need a wee gee up - this (Billy Preston's grin while he holds his jacket and grooves to the music is all of us):

Time for another Le Carré (RIP, David Cornwell):

Marcus has cancer. Dave draws comics. This is their collaboration.

Let's count our blessings.