Tildavid

Nobody can ever again say "You never see David Bowie and Tilda Swinton together, do you?" More about this new video in Guardian Online today: The Stars (Are Out Tonight).

Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso - Saent Saens

From Lincoln Center with Maestro Lorin Maazel and the New York Philharmonic

Joshua Bell plays Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso in A minor Op. 28 by Camille Saent Saens.

Exhilarating and amazing

Never mind the Papal election

Fred is here with the special chimney and the three-part ladder. I'm really worried about him because he was so shaky when I gave him the usual mug of tea before starting. The tea was sloshing everywhere. "Are you sure you're okay to go up there?" I asked him. "Right," said Fred. His hearing is gone as well. Anyway, the cardinals will have to wait. We had dibs on Fred's special chimney rental first.

When Hell is a place called home

Runaway Love - Ludacris ft. Mary J. Blige - YouTube

Sparkly new website

The New Short Stories website has had a makeover, ready for the seventh anthology. There's a bit of a contretemps with the Pope resigning, as the special chimney will now be needed in Rome. Fred is all in a tizz because he does that one as well. Who knew!?

A new song by Nick Cave

Enigmatic and atmospheric. Ray Winstone is in the video. There is another strange song called "Finishing Jubilee Street" on the new album "Push the Sky". It starts: "I'd just finished writing Jubilee Street. / I fell into a very deep sleep. / And when I awoke I believed / I had taken a bride named Mary Stanford." This, as if it were needed, which it's not, seems to signify Jubilee Street as a significant composition.

Water is life...

I hate it when... people love the video and cry their eyes out but don't visit the link and contribute to the charity. Water is Life

A gift taken back

February update – Perfidious Oxford? | Save Kensal Rise Library!

The latest twist in the story of how the generosity of an Oxford College at the turn of the 20th century is being undone by the meanness of their 21st century moneygrabbing descendants, with the collusion of Brent Labour council and the Tory LibDem government. Make no mistake, they are all as bad as each other. It's the local people, ordinary people, versus politicians and greedy sods with sinecures.

A new short story by Zadie Smith

“The Embassy of Cambodia” - The New Yorker

When the Embassy of Cambodia first appeared in our midst, a few years ago, some of us said, “Well, if we were poets perhaps we could have written some sort of an ode about this surprising appearance of the embassy.”

Amazing sort of video collage/animation

Video by Cyriak Harris for "Cirrus" by Bonobo. (Via)

Cuba introduces new travel laws, to muted hope

News | DW.DE | 14.01.2013


Cuando salí de Cuba, Guillermo Portabales

Comment

Whitby church under threat from landslips*

The church, brained by Henry,
crazy, incontinent cliffhanger,
stares catatonic out to sea,
while its footing, undermined,
falls away, clean bones and all,
into Fortune's Kippers.

Crestfallen and bitter, our vicar
transplants the dearly departed
and prays to God, perhaps,
then calls a civil engineer.

--
Stephen Moran

* This graveyard erosion was already a worry in the 19th century, in the time of Dracula, no less, according to Bram Stoker's novel. Whitby is where that nosferatu landed in Blighty, and plenty of the narrative unfolds in the churchyard at Whitby.

Where are we now?

David Bowie's first new song for ten years. Film by Tony Oursler

"Had to get the train from Potsdamer Platz.  You never knew that. That I could do that. Just walking the dead. Sitting in the dschungel on Nürnberger Strasse, a man lost in time near KaDeWe. Just walking the dead. ..."

Phone booths

West

East

The phone booths beside the Willesden Green library centre with flyers and business cards left by pimps.

Africa - BBC trailer

Don't forget this when you're angry with other parts of the BBC!

Signs of the times

Empty bookshop, empty bellies?

Duelling planning applications:
one to redevelop "the piazza",
the other to designate it "a village green"

Can't wait for the Chilcot report?

Life and War with MF Delgado

"Before Hutton, before Butler, before Chilcot, Mikey Fatboy Delgado was looking into the matter... In the spring of 2003 the Iraq war is underway and Mikey is almost all in favour of it. It makes for good television and is improving his sex life. If only the BBC would sort out those green pictures of fighting in the dark he might even be prepared to cough up for a licence. And if only corrupt policing and the amount that Blair grins weren't so unsettling he would be able to relax and enjoy watching the highlights of the fighting more."

Last call for short stories

Don't know if the world will end tomorrow but it's the closing date for entries to the annual short story gala. If you want the one-off mug, inscribed "The Willesden Short Story Prize 2013", plus money, publication and last but least, immortality, here is how to enter.

Live music!!!

Robyn Hitchcock and friends encore "All The Young Dudes" at the Three Kings pub

Friday evening

Harlesden Road

Competition update, end of November 2012

Jenny Barden's novel Mistress of the Sea has been published by Ebury Press in hardback, with the paperback to follow. The word is it has been a runaway success in bookstores, including at Heathrow airport. Jenny's story "Propitiation" in New Short Stories 3 was an excerpt from her then work in progress.

Brian Coleman, whose emotional story The Bedroom was included in New Short Stories 5, has published a collection of his stories called Bright Ripples in a Dark Pool for Amazon Kindle.

Steve Moran has done an interview for Duotrope's listing of the Willesden Herald competition. You might not be able to read it after December, as they have announced that starting from January 2013, there will be a membership fee to access their literary markets database in full.

The rate of entries coming in has gathered pace but we still need a lot more, so please round them up, haul them in, keep them doggies rolling. And. That.

More better sooner repeater

As usual at this time of year, I worry about the number of entries to the short story competition. We need more. As to the quality, I'm finding that some fail due to what I would call general clumsiness. Sentences that should flow and follow may have been over-edited and become herky-jerky. Instead of them being a series of stepping stones there may be unfathomable chasms between each and the next. However, I still see a few interesting stories.

Steve

Official sponsor!

Friday evening walk

Donnington Road

Willesden Sports Centre

Willesden Stadium

Lenin's Tomb: "Israeli psychopath"

"Hamid Abu Daqqa was playing football in his Real Madrid shirt when he was shot through the stomach by IDF troops several weeks ago. This was significant for the Palestinians and the wider Middle East, but not for anyone else. Not a single UK broadcaster knows his name. But do they know Muhammad al-Hums, Ranan Arafat, Omar Mashharawi, Isam Abu al-Miza, Hiba Mashharawi Turk, Mahmoud Abu Sawawin, Marwan Abu al-Qumsan, Walid Abadla, Hanin Tafish, Faris Basyouni, or Muhammad Iyad Sadallah? These are but a small sample of the children, pregnant women and elderly Palestinians killed in recent days by Israel. Not a single UK broadcaster knows a single one of these names.

Anyone with an internet connection can hear live feed of the airjets, drones and helicopter fighters strafing the Gaza sky. If you want the sonic experience of airborne death, it's available to you."  

The beginning of Lenin's Tomb commentary "Israeli psychopath" by Richard Seymour

World market and library fair

Library books on display in the concourse

The world market is a regular Saturday event

Cupcakes from the world market in Willesden library centre.
(Somebody's already had one of the Smarties!)