Christopher Hawtree

Forty years agter the Collected Poems of Stevie Smith !975) came a new one (2015), which has many more drawings and poems which were either rounded up for Me Again or uncollected - including those from Night and Day magazine in 1937. She is terrific. Well produced by @FaberBooks

To the announcement yesterday evening of @BPO_orchestra's autumn/winter season, which has many pleasingly unexpected items. Be sure to book (open to the public a week today). Yesterday's convivial gathering, with Joanna MacGregor, included percussionists and Reich's "Clapping".

JOIE DE VIVRE A note on the glorious film Love Me Tonight (1932) for which Rodgers and Hart wrote the songs. It should be better known. christopherhawtree.com/films.html

@SteveBarraud Ridley got much mileage from being marooned at a railway station.

@chrishawtree I often cycle through the inspiration for it, now on the Bristol to Bath cycle path. Still spooky at night.

To the Barn Theatre in Southwick for the opening of its production of Arnold Ridley's The Ghost Train which I had only seen as the 1941 film and as inspiration for Will Hay's Oh! Mr Porter (1937). The 1925 play has its own brio: it speeds up, rather like a train. A great time.

At the gym somebody mentioned the virtues of apple cider vinegar - especially with the Oedipal ingredient known as "mother".

“Desire paths” are trails, usually bypassing a planned path, that reveal the most convenient route somewhere. The people (AKA meanderthals) that tramp along these routes often wear away grass, creating secondary paths. Walk this way for more on desire paths (a thread / tread)...

A remarkable article about a terrible crime. This reconstruction should be available on the NHS rather than crowdfunded. @Brunswick_Green @TheGreenParty nytimes.com/2025/06/02/wor…

The man in headphones is protected from the noise he makes with a crisp packet.

To @TownerGallery paintings and other work gathered as Sussex Modernism. A good number of late-Twenties views of the sea from Portslade by David Jones. I did not know Lee Miller's photograph of Saul Steinberg posed, his pen seeming to draw Long Man of Wilmington on the hill.

To @nvt_brighton for its sold-out run of the Richard Eyre take on Ibsen's Ghosts, which made me gasp all the more: it turned out to be acting debut of @robshepherd who was as good as the rest of the excellent cast. Shall catch up with the disc of Judi Dench in it.

To a congenial Walrus pub in Brighton for @CohenBobbycoco in James Callas Ball's new, three-hander play The Flat Earthers set in a pub. Wittily humane, its meeting of conspiracy theorists will surely be seen around, I mean across the world - even in Hove, subject of a running gag

On returning from Anoushka Shankar's concert there was time for Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup which Mussolini banned. I shouldn't be surprised if Trump does so, for it has sport with thr subject of... tafiffs. And its overarching subject of war is as potent as ever.

To @brightdome for Anoushka Shankar's very enjoyable New Dawn sitar concert with multi-instrumentist jazz trio who had to speak on her behalf because she had lost her voice after joining a Festival audience in Yoko Ono's participatory "Scream".

@coates_tim Yes, I have heard piece by him that I enjoyed more than yesterday's.

@chrishawtree Look out for John Luther Adams “Canticles of the Sky” recorded by Oliver Coates

To @brightdome for @LPOrchestra concert including John Luther Adams's Vespers for the Blessed Earth. Much talk in all quarters about it: agreement that, ironically, it wasted the resources - talk among eight on the 'bus overheard by somebody who said she was in the chorus. 1/2

@SimoninSuffolk Waht do they sound like?

Meet Dolphy and Mingus, the two latest additions to the household. They're only seven weeks old, but they couldn't stay with their mum any longer. However, they seem to be thriving if their exploring, climbing and copious eating are anything to go by...

How could anybody set store by what footballer Gary Lineker has to say when he promotes ultra-processed @WalkersCrisps?

Successive evenings @brightdome. First, @londonsymphony Leila Josefowicz rousing in Stravinsky's violin concerto; second, @CastalianQtet joined by @ShekuKM who, solo, played the Suite by Natalie Klouda - as marvellously varied as Schubert quintet D956. @Brunswick_Green @ShanksSue