July 2026 Round Up
It remains too hot. The heatwave is enduring, although luckily it has never quite reached the heights of earlier this year where the humidity made my sleepy Cotswold cottage feel like a sauna. But it has remained warm and basically didn't rain at all during July which seems bad.
The soil is dust. We look to the skies and dance.
Life
The biggest thing that happened this month is we got a new cat. Her name is Betsy, she's two years old, tiny and very cheeky. It's nice having a creature in the house again, even if she does wake us up at four in the morning. In related news we are looking into getting a new door for our bedroom, as the previous owner removed it.
I took my wife to Devon for her birthday. We stayed in a tree tent which was very cool, suspended in a little forest. It felt like an escape from everything. We also spent some time lying on the beach and floating in the sea, which was very necessary. July also marked the anniversary of our first date - we've been together twelve years. Here's to many more.
Film
Disclosure Day didn't really land for me. Emily Blunt's performance was great, and of course some of the set pieces were fantastic, but the script felt baggy and unfinished. It needed tightening up to be more successful.
The Golden Spurtle was a lovely little documentary about a porridge competition held in the village of Carrbridge. It was more about the people who got involved in the competition, and the man who ran it. Shot in a way inspired by Wes Anderson, I found this a delight.
With Sam Neill's passing, we re-watched The Hunt for the Wilderpeople. What a perfect film that is, sweet and funny with a real darkness underlying the frantic action. Neill's performance is fantastic, but is matched by Julian Dennison. Absolutely brilliant.
Books
I'm reading Ulysses by James Joyce again as it has been ten years or so since I first got through it. I'm loving it - the complexity of the sentences, the sound of the words, the way he effortlessly captures innermost thoughts, how they drift from the sublime to the ridiculous and everything in-between. It helps having read Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey earlier this year as I can see the parallels more. I'm also lingering over each chapter - reading it, listening to the Shakespeare and Company read through, reading some analysis before re-reading again. It's a rich experience, with so many allusions and detail. Expect an update when I finish - next year or so.
Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince is a personal memoir about the comic discovering how his brain works and why he acts in certain ways. He's very candid and honest throughout while also exploring the joy from understanding. It's also a rallying cry for society to accept neurodiversity more and kicking back against the moan of "everyone's getting diagnosed." Really good.
Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima translated by Geraldine Harcourt is a slim Japanese novel where not a lot happens. A mother stays in a flat after splitting from her no good husband and tries to raise their daughter. There's a deep sadness underlying every part, a loneliness and despair that seeps into the whole novel, while it is also unflinching in the struggles the mother goes through. There's some beautiful passages as well, especially when describing the light.
More non fiction, which is unusual for me. I read Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green quite quickly. It's a history of the disease, how it influenced society, but also an impassioned plea for better health equality across the world. We should lower the cost of treatment and try to eliminate the disease, like we have polio. Green also weaves a personal story of a trip to Sierra Leone and the story of one survivor he met there. Powerful and passionate, this will make you look at the world in a new light.
Somewhere between fiction and non fiction lies The MANIAC by Benjámin Labatut, a strange novel that draws parallels between the atomic bomb, the birth of computing and AlphaGo. It does this through telling the story of John von Neumann, a genius mathematician who was responsible for a lot of the theory. The novel is told in 'interviews' and eye witness accounts of people around him which lends a documentary feel to the book, whilst in it's latter half it slowly becomes a horror story as glimpses of non human intelligence are seen. I'm not totally convinced by the latter part, but the book remains compelling and interesting in it's telling of a major genius that the world has forgotten.
Music
No gigs this month, but I have been listening to a couple of unseasonal albums.
in grief or hope by BIG|BRAVE is expansive, slow feedback drenched music with eeire vocals. It makes me feel like I'm watching the band in a dark dank cave with the walls echoing and vibrating. Its great.
Every year I fall for a goth album and this year its Solstice by A. A. Williams, a solid album full of darkness and guitars. Im clearly trying to summon the night in.
Final Thoughts
Erasure poem taken from Crack Magazine.
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