This week started badly. Like so many weeks of its kind it was proceeded by a triumphant weekend. A reunion with some sorely missed co-conspirators above a pub in Streatham. The session cast a long shadow. The minute I was capable of more than just laying around, I had to march two hundred meters from … Continued
As luck would have it we received news that Lias would be DJing at The Social and this piece entirely by coincidence on the very same day. Except there is no such thing as coincidence is there. It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to you, you who kept me going through the darkest … Continued
As part of our on going ‘We Are One’ week we’re pleased to share this special broadcast from Lias Saoudi with you. Lias’ posts for us have been a hugely important part of The Social Gathering, he’s been with us since the first week (a year ago) and contributed some truly brilliant writing. Big thank … Continued
I recently asked the Irish novelist Rob Doyle to make a contribution to an edition of AMBIT magazine I’d been asked to guest edit (more on that later) and he suggested we attempt an Oulipo; a kind of literary exercise built around prescribed constraints. He asked me to send him fifty or so prompts which … Continued
Quick, there’s very little time to spare. We’re almost at the end. The weekends here are impossible as far as writing anything is concerned, and there’s only one of them left separating me from a reunion with my mum and my brothers, from the inactive sprawl of ‘the Holidays’. My father hasn’t got any software … Continued
When this crisis started, when every live music event in the entire world was cancelled pretty much over night for the foreseeable future, I was in disarray. I was one good festival season away from having saved up enough money for a deposit. An end to rent slavery seemed like a fair renumeration for sacrifices … Continued
My grandmother on my mum’s side, Patricia, died young, in her early fifties. My memories of her are faint, the approximation of several early childhood encounters at best. When I think of her now all I recall is a cloud of cigarette smoke and skin the texture of cracked leather. Apparently she died while she … Continued
In a state of frenzied arrogance around 18 months ago I took it upon myself to hurl a few digital petrol bombs at some of the country’s most beloved acts from the comfort of my hovel in Streatham. In choosing to attack two groups at once I believed I was demonstrating a supreme confidence: a … Continued
Around the time I started writing these posts I also started writing a collection of personal essays about various periods in my life down through the years, in a way these posts were kind of the bi-product of that process, but also a way of confronting a general anxiety I have about publishing anything. When … Continued
Stood outside Downing Street yesterday I saw something that cut through even my own iron clad pessimism. I haven’t been reading or writing much these last few weeks, well I haven’t been writing at all, I’ve been too busy sliding down a greasy pole, making the most of lockdown easing, seeing a few friends, drinking … Continued
The biggest thing clouding my vision is my martyr complex. Even with all the bountiful fruits that life has delivered for me to devour, my rather adept imagination still throws up a sense of having endured a superior kind of suffering to those around me. I have borne indignities that few could possibly understand, I … Continued
Of all the weird and wonderful tales to have emerged in the last six weeks, my little brother deciding to finally try and get a job is the most confounding. Nathan has been a dedicated job hunter since he left our mum’s bungalow in Co. Tyrone to live on my couch in London after getting … Continued
Certain aspects of my personal hygiene have taken a backseat in recent weeks, with nobody around who could possibly care, why not wear the same crappy Primark boxers six days in a row? I love it when they get to this point actually, stepping out of my daily bath back into my room, I take … Continued
In the second of our regular collection of letters from Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi, the writer’s mind travels from Brixton’s Windmill to Sebald’s Suffolk via a fictional Mexican border town and alights upon the most pressing question of the day: “will the pubs open again before the summer ends, and if they don’t, what’s to become … Continued
Arthur Schopenhauer, it was reputed, would stick to a strict daily routine. He would reveille at 7am, drink a strong coffee, take a bath, write until noon, luncheon, read for four hours, practice the flute for half an hour, go for a two hour walk, dine out, then take in a play or a show … Continued
With special guests Lias Saoudi, Anna Wood, Pete Fowler, Sophie Green + more The first in a new series of real life Social Gathering events in the basement of Little Portland St… a chance to invite some of our wonderful contributors downstairs to read, talk and play music. A Social Gathering Social if you like. Or a … Continued
In the latest in a series of collaborative exchanges with Lias Saoudi of the band Fat White Family – which I’m thinking of titling ‘Have They Nothing Better To Do?’ – Lias sent me a few dozen subject headings; I randomly plucked fifteen of these from a bowl and wrote about them. I present the … Continued