telly – EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS

Tarot Poetry as an excuse.

By the time you read this, TLC, Harvette and I will be heading north, up to a real happy place for us—Coniston. As such, normal service has been interrupted for the week. However, as I hate to leave you all hanging, a bit of a free form infodump to keep you all up to date.

To start, and for background, here’s a primer on what we’ll be up to this week, based on our last visit to the Lakes two years ago.

Up On Irish Row

Meanwhile, the Autumn/Winter term at Reading Writers kicked off on Wednesday with a session on the craft and publication of poetry. Which sure yes OK, sounds a little dry. In practice, with the expert guidance of actual poet Katherine Meehan, the evening was a warm and joyful experience. Geeky, yes. It’s a room full of writers talking about writing, after all. Another one of my happy places.

Anyway. There was a prompt writing exercise at the end of the night. Katherine passed out tarot cards and over the course of three exercises, teased us into writing some pomes.

Here’s my card.

And here’s what I came up with.

My father told a story
Of a garden constellation
That he found one golden autumn 
In a corner of his field

Seven stars all in a cluster
Scattered all across the spinach
And he stood and contemplated
His bizarre celestial yield.

So he hung them in a garland
Up above the farmhouse lintel 
And they shone there till the skies fell
And the heavens brought them home

So we toil and work and suffer
But the memory keeps us shining
Of the stars my father brought us
From the great celestial dome.

So. Yeah. that happened. I’m a poet now.

A few life notes.

The best thing we ate this week was a sneaky little weeknight gnocchi hack from the New York Times. Do not, for the love of all things holy, use brussel sprouts. Broccoli works brilliantly. Take the time to get the gnocchi crispy. It’s well worth it.

Gnocci and brown butter

We’re watching season 2 of Colin From Accounts and season 375 of Taskmaster. TLC has got into the Aimee Lee Wood and David Morrisey comedy Daddy Issues, which is utterly hilarious. I’ve been notified that the Apple+ show Bad Monkey is showrun by the guy behind Ted Lasso from a novel by Carl Hiassen, so that will need watching. The weather is closing in. It’s telly time.

Prime Reading continues to be a source of useful comics goodness. I’ve just found out that all ten volumes of Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra’s Scalped is up on the service. A black-hearted, blood-red noir set on a Native American reservation, it’s tight, sharp, twisty and nasty—you know, in a good way. Brilliantly written and illustrated, moves like a truck, kicks like a mule oh look you get the idea. If you enjoyed Justified, you’ll frickin love this.

Oh, and I have a low-key obsession to share.

This is apparently a thing on the TubeGrams…

Which naturally brought me here. Delicious.

And we Outro on a high. An utter gem of British variety programming from the 70s, please enjoy Marti Caine tearing the room up with her disco version of a folk rock classic. You won’t be feelin’ low after this.

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See you next Saturday.

The Cut Season 2 Episode 32

Wait, it’s August? When the heck did that happen? Wasn’t it, like, Easter two weeks ago? I guess as we haven’t really had a summer as such it’s easy to lose track of time. One event you can depend upon is the Saturday drop of your favourite internet compendium. It may come down to the wire sometimes (our editor is putting this issue to bed less than ninety minutes before hitting the go button) but we strive to be there for you. A little structure in wobbly times.

In this week’s ep, we start and end with comics, take in some bread and rice and consider the lightning.

Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.

The Cut Season 2 Episode 24

By the time you get this, we will be off on our second team getaway in just over a month. With the potential risk of the Delta Variant (now that’s the title for a seventies SF movie if ever we heard it) threatening to scupper the easement of restrictions, we figured we’d better take the chance while we had it. Therefore, expect a lighter Cut next week.

However, it’s business as usual for now. We’re looking at the joy of the SF ensemble cast, barbecue sauces to die for and how much skill it takes to make a ton of mistakes.

This now here time place yes Cut.

The Cut Season 2 Episode 18

Welcome to the fiftieth episode of The Cut! Begun as an exercise in sanity-preservation in the height of lockdown, we’re pleased to have kept the momentum going, sending our patent-pending brew of links and commentary without pause to our literally dozens of readers for all this time. Of course this means there’s an even bigger milestone looming up on the horizon in a couple of weeks…

This week, we ask important tongue-related questions, introduce you to The Witch of King’s Cross and sing a song for the man who took the loneliest flight of all.

Time check! Now! Location check! Here! This is The Cut!

The Cut Season 2 Episode 11

Featured image by Joel Meyerowitz, Times Square, New York City, 1963. Via Flashbak.

We begin with a little housekeeping. Some of you will have noticed there was no drop yesterday. The inevitability of a skip day has been looming ever more since responsibilities other than The Cut (yes, we do have lives and engagements more pressing than the newsletter, distressing as that might sound) have jumped on our backs and starting nibbling at our earlobes.

So, thus and therefore, the executive decision has been made to shift The Cut’s drop point to Saturday morning. This gives our beleaguered staff a little more wiggle room to deliver on schedule and means you, our beloved Readership, can now read our compilation of curiosities in bed with a nice cup of tea. Everyone wins! Do join us in this brave new world of possibilities.

This week—Muppets! Creepy skunks! And yes, something about reading in bed.

Saturday is the time. Bed is the place. This is The Cut.

The Cut Season 2 Episode 7

It’s all feeling a bit liminal. Although the news improves around vaccination levels and dropping R rates, life still has the frozen quality of a holding pattern. The streets remain quiet, the shops mostly closed. The pubs… better not to think about that lest we dissolve into a puddle of regretful tears. But hey, as the great seer Steve Miller put it— ‘time keeps on tickin’, tickin’, tickin’, into the future’. Bring on the summer.

Today we check out the fun you can have with explosives, consider how a Mars colony might deal with a pandemic and consider the vexed question of American cheese.

Hey, you there! Now is the time, yeah? This is the place, right? What else could this be but The Cut‽

The Cut🎄At Christmas

Hail Santa! Ho, furthermore ho, and in conclusion, ho. How fares the day, our delightful Readership? We hope it finds you in an eggnogilicious mood. Ongoing changes to the lockdown rules mean that most of the staff at The Cut have been forced to stay in the office for the season, roasting chestnuts and turkey in an improvised and potentially deadly adapted microwave setup. Oh well, those of us that survive will all be laughing about it this time next year.

Let’s get the festivities started, shall we? Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin’s in a rut. Now is the time, here is the place, welcome to The Cut!

The Cut 🗡️Issue 23

We had a link from Wired as the opener this week, on how the work/life balance has become irretrievably skewed (https://www.wired.com/story/how-work-became-an-inescapable-hellhole/ if you’re interested) but we realised you all know this already. So let’s put that nonsense to one side and instead centre up the nonsense you have come to know and love over the last several months.

This week, scary sound effects, an iconic bus route and a really rather funky musical instrument you can all play.

Now is the time, here is the place. This is The Cut.

The Cut – Issue 12

Here we are again, my lovelies. Three months of linky goodness from Cut Command, beaming out from our transmission tower high on a hill overlooking the biggest town in the UK. We are proud to provide you, therefore, with the finest in Reading material.

Look, come on, four months of lockdown will do a number on anyone’s head. Let’s crack on, shall we? Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.

The Cut – Issue 6

Another week down. The shops reopened, but frankly we’re happy behind the walls of our compound, letting all the goodies we need come to us. Queueing, we have decided, is not our bag. We may never shop in the old-fashioned way again. Anyway. Let’s do this. Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.