These past few days we took in our just about annual Thought Bubble weekend so we’ve been in Harrogate spending far too much money on comics, art, games and zines. It was a good time to do it too as it was a perfect distraction from the news.
There have been a number of times over the years when I’ve taken to shutting myself off from the news and social media for various reasons, but this past weekend was a perfect example of the insidious madness surrounding us at the moment. Twitter was a conflagration of flame wars consisting of competing videos of red-faced nazi dick heads in Victoria station harassing people of colour vs videos of women in McDonalds shouting ‘death to all Jews’. Meanwhile, a still of a right-wing counter-protest showed Israel flags being held high amongst ranks of bald pillocks throwing nazi salutes. When irony is this dead surely it’s the end times on fast forward.
I’d have gone and bought some napalm, but it was Sunday.
All the shops were shut.
In these circumstances, we could only power on and drink Black Tower spritzers (a proper end-of-world beverage if I’ve ever found one).
Thought Bubble was a fun time as ever and it gave Phil and me the opportunity to meet patron Tom Murphy and his wife Jane, co-runners of Colossive Press, in person. Tom and Jane print a number of wonderful zines and books, some very moving and personal. I was delighted to grab some of those, including a trio of collections of photographs by Jane’s late Dad Gordon, Fractures, Book One by Aaron Wolfgang, Ghost Stories I Remember by Patrick Wray (including a little hand-drawn sketch by Patrick) plus their latest release A Trial Death and Other Stories by Glenn Dakin. To cap it all off I got them all in a Croydon Spaceport tote bag!
It was lovely to meet you both Tom.
Fast forward a bit, it’s now Wednesday, we’ve just about recovered from our extended Black Tower Bender (although other beverages were consumed) and the news cycle has moved on. I won’t bang on about the current state of the UK’s zombie government other than to say it has now begun to eat its own tail in desperation. Truly we are living in a Realm of Chaos.
AND ON THAT LAZY SEGWAY…
I’ll be getting on to editing the latest show tonight, which will be out over the next day or two, and this was a fairly short notice affair consisting of a quick back and forth over the voxcaster with none other than Karl Willets, beer lover and legendary vocalist and front man of Bolt Thrower and Memoriam. This was pretty groovy for me as Bolt Thrower and their more short-lived contemporaries Sabbat were, to my ears, the saviours of British metal at the time they broke out. The Immaterium did present some comms challenges but I’ll be working through those this evening.
The rest of the itinerary remains semi-stable for the moment but of course, we’re heading into that busiest time of year in people’s calendars. Nevertheless, we have Corum, politics, Hawklords, Black Swords, very British Armageddons, birthdays and more to come.
Take care out there.
Breakfast in the Ruins Podcast 