Harry inherited the stew from his father, and the cafe came with it. Most of what they sold was greasy breakfasts, or lunches as stodgy as 80s school dinners. And then there was the stew, the same one that had been on the hob since they opened. Harry never knew how his Dad had squared it with Environmental Health.

Coming back from London to take over the business, Harry saw the same regulars he recognised from when he was a teenager, turning up for bowls of stew, only they were twenty years older.

Harry's Dad started out as a butcher. His stew had been thick and meaty, picking up flavour from bones and flesh. Harry remembered his Dad's irritation at Harry turning vegetarian. His mother said Harry would grow out of it, that it was a phase, a way to wind up his Dad. Giving up meat wasn't why Harry left home, but it hadn't helped.

The stew would change with the seasons, with whatever veg was cheap but, as Harry's stew, it grew lighter and spicier. No more meat went in, even though the soup would, technically, never be vegetarian. But Harry kept it going, even as the old customers complained, even as new ones took their place. In the heart of that stew remained a trace of his father.

Live Show!

I’m doing my second live performance of the year in October, this time supporting Rosy Carrick’s Buxton launch for her new book, I Love… The gig takes place in Scrivener’s, which contains five storeys of books, and will be a great place to perform. There’s not a lot of tickets available for this one, so book them ASAP.

Rosy’s collection is also available for pre-order from Burning Eye Press. I am so fucking excited to read this.

Experimental and playful, the poems dart across a fractured and eclectic terrain: from quantum mechanics, grimy London sex clubs and fridged women to blood retinal barrier corruption, haunted reservoirs and salted gastropods; from Baudrillard’s semiotics to the architectural aspirations of Elizabeth Bennet; from gurning infants to ecstatic glitter and misplaced canine arseholes; and always back to how it might be possible to love from under the rubble.

The full tour is on Rosy’s website. I’m reading tarot at the Brighton gig on October 10th. I’m also hoping to make it along to the Liverpool gig - and there’s the hometown show to be announced soon. Can’t wait.

The Stew: Background

Perpetual Soup features in Blair Mastbaum's Atlas Obscura article The ‘Perpetual Broths’ That Simmer for Decades, which was later retracted as a fake. It's still a good article, starting with the (apparently invented) Magdalena Perrotte smuggling stock into the USA, a basis for a soup that is 'older than Taylor Swift'.

Perrotte describes rumours about long-simmering pots in France, such as one particular batch in Normandy that simmered constantly for over 300 years, while an even older pot, in Perpignan, had apparently been bubbling since the 1400s, meeting its end in World War II bombing raids.

My plans for 2026 are starting to take form. I'm hoping to write a few novellas made up of fragments. This is a section from one of those imaginary novellas, The Monday Table.

Recommendations

I struggle lately with watching films at home. Partly it's a problem with committing to settling down, when there are so many other things I could be doing. The other problem is picking what to watch. It's so hard to find one thing on the streaming services that best matches my mood.

But going to the cinema works for me. So far this month, I've been three times. I like having to book the film into my calendar and then looking forward to it. I like that I can't flick on my phone during the slow bits, allowing the film to cast its spell. I would never have loved The Brutalist so much it I’d tried watching it at home.

Saturday's movie was The Long Walk, an adaptation of a novel by the late Richard Bachman. It's set in a dystopian America where, each year, 50 young men compete to walk continuously at three miles an hour. Anyone who falls below this speed is executed. The surviving competitor wins a huge cash sum and 'a wish'.

Francis Lawrence's adaptation is gripping. He captures the walk’s relentless horror, allowing the allegorical resonances space to develop. The growing, doomed friendship between Ray Garraty and Peter McVries is beautifully acted. The agony and the horror grows as the march continues, and you know only one can survive.

The Long Walk is an excruciating horror movie, and well worth watching. I'm just frustrated that a little more budget than its $20 million would have produced a classic. There are few spectators for the race, little feeling that this is a large enough event to raise American morale1. And I longed for more of the beautiful landscape shots. The best moments of the movie are with the walkers dwarfed by the landscape, their horror framed as a tiny thing.