2026-10-19 23:23:08
The five Lisbon girls are impossibly beautiful angels, adored by the local boys, raised by an overbearing mother and a weak father in the affluent suburb of Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in the summer of 1975.
The historical context is important when reading the novel, and will explain some of the language and the attitudes.
The premise of the book is very interesting, as is the perspective from which it's written: an unnamed neighbourhood boy, twenty years after the fact, recounting the events of that year.
The blurb on the back of the book suggests the Lisbon girls top themselves one by one over the course of a year, but that isn't exactly correct. Hashtag no spoilers, though.
I can't actually remember if I read this before I saw the Sofia Coppola adaptation. The two are so intrinsically entwined that I can't separate them. The book looks like the film's cinematography and sounds like Air; the French dream-pop band who scored the movie. You can read a hazy, sun-bleached quality in the words.
There's the intangible naïvety of the boys, and the way this borderline obsession shapes their lives long afterwards. It's also dark: voyeurism, fetishisation, an oblique misunderstanding of love.
But what is essentially a retrospective is surprisingly unintrospective. It goes back over the events, more or less simply explaining they messed the boys up, even to this day. The girls themselves are viewed only from a distance, vessels for these boys' ideas, less so characters in themselves.
It has a feeling of being quite feminist. With the famous line: "Obviously, doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl", it alludes to the hardships of growing up as a teenage girl, particularly in a Western, patriarchal society, and for 1975, a misogynistic, traditional, conservative kind of environment with strict ideas of what a girl should be. But for all its girlish polish, it's a dirty novel, and something I don't think I quite appreciated when I was younger.
It's some sort of pastiche of the male gaze: a recounting of the lives of these five girls by a bunch of men, filling in the gaps between stolen glances, stolen moments, and stolen artefacts. Quite entitled, and patriarchal and misogynistic in itself.
One way or another, this masterful novel has haunted me for three decades, and it's likely to continue to haunt me for the next three.
2026-10-19 03:36:15
Impossibly warm sun shines through a chink in the seemingly endless rain clouds, catching the wings of a flock of crows in flight –I briefly wonder if one of them is the bird I saw dive-bombing a Buzzard over the fields yesterday– and lighting the first fallen yellow leaves scattered across the road like so much pirate gold. "You're the piece of gold that glitter on my soul" sings the guy from Air as though this moment is choreographed.
My project didn't win the award. Didn't even scrape Bronze. Flashed up on the big screen as a shortlisted contender though. Several many messages of commiseration after the event though, which was nice.
Also work-related, I received some anonymous feedback which is amazing and deserves shouting about so thank you Anonymous!
[H]is willingness to provide technical support across almost everything we do has elevated the quality of our work as CX. He doesn’t just work hard; he makes everyone around him more capable too
Anonymous
I finished reading "The Virgin Suicides" (Jeffrey Eugenides, 1993) and immediately started on "Before the Coffee Gets Cold" (Toshikazu Kawaguchi, 2015). Not only does this mean I hit my goal of 24 books for the year by mid-October, but I also have a working theory that the more busy, chaotic, and frenetic work gets, the calmer and more chill my books get. Anyway, reviews are likely forthcoming but, in short, I recommend both of these books if you want to read something slow-paced.
Inherited a wooden kitchen table that is, sadly, gorgeous but too small. I didn't want to throw it away so it's taken up residence in the shed for working on home projects. This necessitated tidying the shed first. Four hours, two tip runs, and one ache-y neck later the shed is clean and organised. I put up shelving from bits I found in there, repaired some damaged panels, and shored up a cracked floorboard. Exhausted though I was, I'll be really proud of past me when Spring rolls around and I need to get the mower out.
Her mind was made up. Or, more accurately, a stubborn resolve had taken root.
Toshikazu Kawaguchi, "Before the Coffee Gets Cold"
2026-10-12 22:37:12
I literally just bought a new notebook to replace the near-full battered Moleskine that permanently lives in my back pocket. Then I saw this!
The lines are watermarked, not printed so they basically are invisible!
One of those ridiculously simple solutions that you wonder why no-one thought of it before.
£62 whole English pounds is a little steep for my to-do lists but, with that Japanese paper quality and outstanding engineering, it will likely strike a chord with hardcore journalists that keep their notebooks forever.
A notebook with lines when you write. Without them when you read.
2026-10-12 04:09:33
Not claiming to be wholly responsible but, shortly after I mentioned it on my website, the water board were back looking at the leak at the junction.
It was clearly a quick fix because now there's a square of fresh tarmac and, sadly, no midnight mountain stream.
Today's soundtrack has been Air's OST for Sofia Coppola's "The Virgin Suicides" which has made driving to the tip to drop off a couple of broken chairs 42% more epic! There's a long straight tree-lined suburban road I have to drive down to get there and,at that time in the morning, the rising sun lancing golden through the trees mixed with the French dream pop and landed me squarely in a Coppola vignette.
I have mentioned before how my work has an internal awards thing where we showcase noteworthy work and hand out prizes. This year is no different except one of the projects shortlisted is the one I've spent the best part of the last twelve months working on!
This week, we had the first pitch: presenting the project product to a panel of judges comprising senior leadership of the agency and some clients for an outside perspective.
We are in the "Opportunity Unlocked" category and, I feel, we've got a good chance as we identified a niche ahead of the market and built bespoke software to supply the need meaning when clients ask (and they do!) we're already ready to go.
I can't say too much about it because it's a confidential, internal methodology with proprietary software but what I can say is (a) it's pretty cool, and (b) I'm really proud of my teammates for presenting it so well.
Fingers crossed! 🤞
Obviously, doctor, you've never been a thirteen year old girl
Jeffrey Eugenidies, "The Virgin Suicides"
2026-10-06 02:55:44
Newly-wed investigative journalists Mike and Phyllis Watson witness unearthly fireballs plunging into the sea from their cruise ship and embark on a years-long mission to uncover the truth with the aid of a madcap scientist and the military.
Although Wyndham is generally considered to be rather left wing in his ideas, he is also a man of his time; and a very middle class white man of his time at that.
Progressive though the lofty ideas of the plot may be, some of those 1950s attitudes are writ large in the text. Arguably, it's all necessary for the characterisation but it can be a bit much if you're used to a more modern tone.
An anti-Communism theme prevails but, I'd argue, this is more a commentary on the narrator and the general attitudes of the era. Given the Cold War in full swing and the Stalinist regime, it's more anti-Soviet than a nuanced critique of actual social political theory.
That said, the "othering" language that colours talk of the Russians is a lovely foil for comparing and contrasting attitudes to the invading aliens.
What Wyndham does exceptionally well, however, is to create an extraterrestrial threat that wreaks havoc on the planet in a way that parallels humans giving us, should we choose to glimpse below the tissue thin veneer, a tale of speculative apocalyptic fiction.
Here the monsters destroy the ice caps causing sea levels to rise catastrophically. Wyndham goes into detail about the ensuing social fallout — destruction and lawlessness, food shortages, and mass migration.
A nightmare scenario that clearly echoes mankind's own actions to catastrophically raise sea levels with a climate crisis. Remember, this book was written seventy years ago!
The ending is a bit "rah rah hockey sticks stiff upper lip old chap" but, without it, the future is just bleak.
2026-10-05 03:33:25
The sky is milky white; an impenetrable ceiling of cloud so pale the contrails are barely legible. In passing overhead, Two planes have described a giant "X marks the spot" denoting where there is no treasure.
The previous evening, a trick of perspective meant an approaching aircraft's blinking lights temporarily replaced Merak in The Plough. Fun fact from Wikipedia (citation needed): in 50,000 years' time, the stars will have so drifted as to form a Plough facing the opposite direction!
Later in the week, it's absolutely heaving down. The perfect weather to curl up under a blanket on the sofa with a cup of tea and some classic horror. If only it wasn't for that pesky work…
Speaking of work — the biggest achievement this week has been getting the go ahead on the medical education programme build. It's been on pause while we work to accommodate multiple complex requirements.
This led to having to present options to all interested parties at once, foster a discussion, and extract enough confirmation to start building. It was tense building up to this meeting. We had to quadruple-check our approach to ensure the chosen approach was a genuine compromise; where no-one is completely happy but everyone is ready for the next step!
A couple of weeks back, the water board had our road dug up to fix a cracked water main. Since then, there's been a steady stream of water bubbling up through the tarmac like some kind of urban mountain spring! An entire junction is sodden and the excess water trickles down a nearby grid which sounds lovely — a babbling brook in the dead of night.
I'm a reliable witness, you're a reliable witness, practically all God's children are reliable witnesses in their own estimation--which makes it funny how such different ideas of the same affair get about.
John Wyndham, "The Kraken Wakes"