Some Melodious Plot
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somemelodiousplot.bsky.social
Some Melodious Plot
@somemelodiousplot.bsky.social
I’m the dog who stole your birthday cake.

https://somemelodiousplot.blogspot.com/
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2025 favourites

Film: The Ice Tower
Song: Matt Berninger, Nabokov Cocktail
Album: BC Camplight, A Sober Conversation
Gig: The Hold Steady
Theatre: Giant, Royal Court
Book: Michael Symmons Roberts, Quartet for the End of Time: On Music, Grief & Birdsong.
Exhibition: Van Gogh, The National Gallery
Here for Inland Empire, but if I’d been a bit quicker off the mark I could have made it an amazing double bill, Withnail himself doing the Q&A.
January 18, 2026 at 4:14 PM
Hamnet is a very dirty film. Not in that way, Matron! :-) Rather fingernails and hands, the sides of Tudor houses, filthy streets.
January 17, 2026 at 6:32 PM
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STOP.

We have a major news story in our house. It's been building up for a few days and this afternoon came the denouement.

It's the story of a banana.
January 16, 2026 at 9:47 PM
Taxidermied Tories is rather beautiful (in a bad taxidermy way). Very harsh on Bucks Fizz though.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Mystic Nigel has seen the future: a country run by his cabinet of taxidermied Tories | Marina Hyde
By welcoming ‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick into the fold, the Reform seer is embracing the uniparty chaos he claimed to be seeing off, writes Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
www.theguardian.com
January 16, 2026 at 7:21 PM
Get your weekend off to a fine start by watching this, and gasping in wonder as Jeff and the gang nail the noodly bit in Turn To Stone. #ELO

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXpj...
Jeff Lynne's ELO - Turn to Stone (Live at Wembley Stadium)
YouTube video by ELOVEVO
www.youtube.com
January 16, 2026 at 3:13 PM
I watched The Greatest Night in Pop last night. All about the recording of We Are The World. I don't really like the song, but loved this documentary. All that was missing was a permanent Bob Dylan cam. He was utterly lost until Stevie Wonder sorted him out.
January 16, 2026 at 11:23 AM
The glory that was Phoenix Nights, and memories of my own nights out in Clubland (Goose Green Labour Club ... not that Goose Green, sunshine!)

A quibble on this Guardian piece though ... it doesn't half read like it's been generated by AI.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...
Phoenix Nights: 25 years since Peter Kay’s record-breaking TV comedy like no other
The eccentric, sharp-eyed sitcom was so loved that it was once the fastest-selling DVD ever. A quarter of a century on from its Channel 4 debut, why has it fallen so far off the radar?
www.theguardian.com
January 15, 2026 at 2:15 PM
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Columbo in his first episode looks like a dog that's just come back from the groomer
October 14, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Marginalia from 2004. I wasn’t wrong! #Proust
January 14, 2026 at 6:56 PM
"AI will have mowed the lawn and washed the dishes, assuming that some remnant of ordinary life persists. This seems optimistic."

Marilynne Robinson on AI and affordability. @nybooks.com

www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
At What Cost? | Marilynne Robinson
New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani plans to absorb individual costs into the collective life of the city, but whether that will be enough is an open question.
www.nybooks.com
January 14, 2026 at 4:36 PM
Afternoon parts one and two.
January 13, 2026 at 4:30 PM
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Either thick or pretending to be thick. Neither is good…(unlike the amusing examples of correlation in the replies)
Kemi, this is just a population density map
January 12, 2026 at 9:58 AM
Post a pic of the venue where you saw your first concert and the band or artist.
January 11, 2026 at 12:10 PM
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This week in London included: Cirque du Soleil at Albert Hall, Hamnet, Infinite Bodies at Somerset House, lunch in a French restaurant, dance class, gym, lunch with friends, beautiful London parks in winter ice, hosting friends, wassailing in community orchard. One week in this 'dangerous city' LOL
I wonder what Londoners know that the rest of the country don’t?
January 11, 2026 at 11:16 AM
“Dad, Lego are releasing an inferior Daily Bugle!”
“Smaller than the one in your bedroom?”
“Yep, that one has 25 mini-figures and the new one only has 7!”
“Well, print journalism is dying!”
January 11, 2026 at 11:17 AM
January
January 10, 2026 at 12:09 PM
Sensing the sea-change as the boy approaches his teens. Saturday mornings were once up early for cartoons and telly, but now he’s sleeping in till near noon. So I sit here listening to Radio 3 and feeling rested but slightly melancholy.
January 10, 2026 at 10:21 AM
David Byrne covering Olivia Rodrigo's Drivers License is exactly what your middleaged Friday needs.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmee...
David Byrne - drivers license (Official Audio)
YouTube video by David Byrne
www.youtube.com
January 9, 2026 at 12:36 PM
I keep reading it as 'Storm Górecki'.

Which would be a lovely name for a storm.
January 9, 2026 at 11:13 AM
Ways to escape the constantly hideous news. I'm taking my star app a bit more seriously and went to the park on the way home last night to work out the two stars to the left of Jupiter. Castor and Pollux - the Gemini twins.

www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/casto...
Castor and Pollux, the twin stars of Gemini | BBC Sky at Night Magazine
How to find Castor and Pollux in Gemini, and facts about the twin stars.
www.skyatnightmagazine.com
January 8, 2026 at 10:58 AM
‘5 o'clock, and in the street by Russell Square
The strip lights shine
I disappear
I was no one today.’

So to bed.

youtu.be/qP_gLrFPWXA?...
The Clientele - Lunar Days (Lyric Video)
YouTube video by Merge Records on YouTube
youtu.be
January 7, 2026 at 10:39 PM
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No new pictures where are you mentally.
January 7, 2026 at 9:20 PM
Once again, I'm urged to get stuck into Samuel Pepys diaries before I die. A brilliant Deborah Friedell review of Kate Loveman's book on the history, deciphering, and censoring of Pepys' work. @lrb.co.uk

'Exegi monumentum aere perennius'.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Deborah Friedell · Lifted Up: Pepys Deciphered
Pepys was a meticulous – some might say compulsive – record-keeper. Into his diary’s pages went social debts (who...
www.lrb.co.uk
January 7, 2026 at 3:37 PM
Saw my favourite Shakespeare again, Twelfth Night, at the Barbican last week. A perfect winter-warmer (and cake and ale earlier in the day). So this was a must-see on YouTube. Glorious stuff, particularly Robert Lindsay's Larry Olivier/Doris Speed anecdote.

www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/j...
‘Melancholy magic’: how Judi Dench and a host of stars came under the spell of the greatest comedy in history
The Twelfth Night Reunion gathers some of the grandest names in British theatre, including Simon Callow and Stephen Fry, to explain why Shakespeare’s play continues to bewitch audiences
www.theguardian.com
January 7, 2026 at 2:17 PM
An extraordinary cover of Foreigner's 'I Want To Know What Love Is' by Iron and Wine.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fj8...
Iron & Wine + Ben Bridwell - I Want To Know What Love Is (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Band Of Horses
www.youtube.com
January 6, 2026 at 1:42 PM