celebrity lookeylikey of the day

I was struck, on reading through the various obituaries and tributes for music industry mogul and Arista label founder Clive Davis, by his resemblance to actor, comedian and gravelly-voiced professional Londoner Mike Reid.

Reid (who died back in 2007) got a mention (the only one, as far as I can tell) on this blog almost exactly a year ago in a musical context. Reid's voice, general look and mannerisms were, I'd assume, largely the inspiration for the Fast Show's Dave Angel character. Davis, on the other hand, sounds (or sounded, anyway) pretty much exactly like you would expect him to sound. 

loitering within tent

A few notes from our brief trip to Dorset over the Bank Holiday weekend: -

• We stayed in a campsite called The Dorset Hideaway, which does what it says on the tin by being tucked away in a secluded rural spot. "The middle of nowhere" is a relative term, especially in southern England, but it is a mile or two from the nearest villages. Those villages are Shave Cross, which is really just a few houses and a pub which appears to be currently closed, and Whitchurch Canonicorum, which is very slightly larger and has a pub which does appear to be a going concern, though we didn't get a chance to call in. Anyway, the campsite is perfectly nice, though it pushes the "glamping" angle quite heavily (as you'll see from the website) and, possibly as a consequence, doesn't really have enough toilet facilities for us plebs in the tent field, especially on the hottest weekend of the year when it's busy. 
• It's a pretty handy location for the various beaches in the area, though, which is an important consideration when it's scorchingly hot. As it happens the Jurassic Coast isn't the best place for traditional sandy beaches; most of them are either various grades of shingle or, at best, a mixture of sand and shingle. Great for fossil hunting, less good for sandcastle building. The best beach for traditional stuff like that is probably Charmouth, which just happens to be the one we were closest to; other more shingly experiences can be had at Bridport, Lyme Regis, Sidmouth and Exmouth. We did also go to Weymouth, which has a reasonably sandy beach, although as it was Bank Holiday Monday when we went you'd have struggled to see any of the sand through the expanse of shoulder-to-shoulder flesh that was occupying it. 
• We didn't go to the beach in Bridport, but we did go to a couple of food and drink establishments that I deem worthy of mention: firstly Mercato Italiano, somewhat bizarrely situated in a warehouse on an industrial estate but serving excellent pizzas, and secondly Soulshine, a cafe in the centre of town which supposedly does nice food but which we only had time to pop into quickly for a refreshing glass of fizzy rhubarbade. 
• We briefly met up with some friends for a lunchtime picnic after packing up at the campsite on the Wednesday - they live in Bournemouth so we went for something in between there and the campsite. I selected this location, fairly unscientifically, by looking at an Ordnance Survey map and finding a big green area that also had the big blue and white P that denotes a car park. That turned out to be Powerstock Common Nature Reserve, a funny little place tucked away under a disused railway bridge (more on this in a minute) and featuring all manner of delightful species of butterfly, newt, and, thrillingly, a population of rare mud snails who I would hope have the good sense not to slurp out onto the paths to be crunchily trodden on by unsuspecting walkers.
• But enough of that heartwarming gastropod-centric nature crap, you'll be saying, what about this disused railway you so mouth-wateringly dangled in front of us just a bullet point or so back? Well. This is the remnants of the old Bridport branch line which connected with the still-operational main line between Bristol and Weymouth, was earmarked for closure in the Beeching report of the early 1960s but limped on until 1975 before eventually closing. All the track has been lifted and part of the trackbed incorporated into a circular walk round the nature reserve of probably no more than 4 kilometres or so, but which we didn't have the time, inclination or, in some cases, shoes to attempt.

• The bridge itself incorporates a height/clearance warning sign and you just know I checked that shit against the database from the earlier post. This is in a much more commonly-encountered height range than the weirdly low bridge at Bishton so it's already been bagged; the example given is from Bromsgrove. All I would say to whoever daubed the accompanying graffiti, which says, if you're struggling, "STOP DEMOLITION OF THIS BRIDGE" is: well, so far so good, lads.
• Lastly, it was Hazel's birthday on the Tuesday - all I would say here is: if you have chocolate-based presents to hand over on an occasion such as this, then a tent on the hottest few days of the year isn't the best place to store them, at least if you want to ensure they're in tip-top store-fresh condition when they eventually get opened. 

nurse! the curse has got worse

Time passes, fashions change, civilisations come and go, the cosmic ballet goes on, but the Curse of Electric Halibut grinds on in its relentless way regardless of all this, biding its time, pruning an author here, a novelist there, occasionally capriciously annihilating a few in quick succession, but never stopping.

The latest victim (a month or so ago) and - unless I've missed one, which is perfectly possible - the first of 2026, is Australian novelist David Malouf, two of whose novels (according to Wikipedia he only wrote nine) have featured here: The Conversations At Curlow Creek in early 2010 and his most famous novel Remembering Babylon in late 2013. That means that the curse length of 16 years 99 days slots Malouf in in a solid fourth place behind Mario Vargas Llosa, David Lodge and Kinky Friedman, and just ahead of Milan Kundera. Malouf was a pretty respectable 92 years old; the leader there remains Jennifer Johnston at 95. 

Author	Date of first book	Date of death	Age	Curse length
Michael Dibdin	31st January 2007	30th March 2007	60	0y 59d
José Saramago	9th May 2009	18th June 2010	87	1y 40d
Beryl Bainbridge	14th May 2008	2nd July 2010	77	2y 50d
Russell Hoban	23rd August 2010	13th December 2011	86	1y 113d
Richard Matheson	7th September 2011	23rd June 2013	87	1y 291d
Iain Banks	6th November 2006	9th June 2013	59	6y 218d
Elmore Leonard	April 16th 2009	20th August 2013	87	4y 128d
Doris Lessing	8th May 2007	17th November 2013	94	6y 196d
Gabriel García Márquez	10th July 2007	17th April 2014	87	6y 284d
Ruth Rendell	23rd December 2009	2nd May 2015	85	5y 132d
James Salter	4th February 2014	19th June 2015	90	1y 136d
David Cook	24th February 2009	16th September 2015	74	6y 205d
Henning Mankell	6th May 2013	5th October 2015	67	2y 152d
William McIlvanney	7th September 2010	5th December 2015	79	5y 90d
Umberto Eco	30th June 2012	19th February 2016	84	3y 234d
Anita Brookner	15th July 2011	10th March 2016	87	4y 240d
William Trevor	29th May 2010	20th November 2016	88	6y 177d
John Berger	10th November 2009	2nd January 2017	90	7y 55d
Nicholas Mosley	24th September 2011	28th February 2017	93	5y 159d
Helen Dunmore	10th March 2008	5th June 2017	64	9y 89d
JP Donleavy	21st May 2015	11th September 2017	91	2y 114d
Ursula Le Guin	6th December 2015	22nd January 2018	88	2y 49d
Anita Shreve	2nd September 2006	29th March 2018	71	11y 211d
Philip Roth	23rd December 2017	22nd May 2018	85	0y 150d
Justin Cartwright	7th September 2008	3rd December 2018	75	10y 89d
Toni Morrison	18th July 2010	5th August 2019	88	9y 20d
Charles Portis	3rd April 2018	17th February 2020	86	1y 320d
Alison Lurie	24th March 2007	3rd December 2020	94	13y 254d
John le Carré	21st February 2008	12th December 2020	89	12y 295d
Joan Didion	14th December 2010	23rd December 2021	87	11y 12d
Hilary Mantel	22nd October 2010	22nd September 2022	70	11y 338d
Greg Bear	4th October 2021	19th November 2022	71	1y 48d
Russell Banks	4th December 2018	7th January 2023	82	4y 35d
Isabel Colegate	24th October 2009	12th March 2023	91	13y 140d
Cormac McCarthy	22nd September 2009	13th June 2023	89	13y 265d
Milan Kundera	27th March 2008	11th July 2023	94	15y 105d
Christopher Priest	6th January 2015	4th February 2024	80	9y 26d
Paul Auster	22nd April 2012	30th April 2024	77	12y 8d
Kinky Friedman	19th December 2007	27th June 2024	79	16y 191d
David Lodge	4th March 2008	1st January 2025	89	16y 301d
Jennifer Johnston	23rd July 2012	25th February 2025	95	12y 215d
Mario Vargas Llosa	12th April 2007	13th April 2025	89	18y 1d
Frederick Forsyth	8th November 2021	9th June 2025	86	3y 214d
Daniel Woodrell	12th January 2016	28th November 2025	72	9y 320d
David Malouf	14th January 2010	22nd April 2026	92	16y 99d