March Notebook
Some things we've been enjoying this month.
Hello friends,
I trust you’re all very well. I’m getting back up to speed after a very welcome long weekend celebrating my birthday AND my wedding anniversary. A good tip for any aspiring husbands/wives out there - if you get married on your birthday, you’ll never forget your anniversary. It’s worked out well for me these past eleven (ELEVEN!) years.
To celebrate, on Friday I took myself off to the cinema (to see Project Hail Mary, which was… fine), had a much-needed massage, and then Zoe and I went for dinner at Lima in Shoreditch, which I urge you to steer well-clear of, unless you enjoy overpaying for fairly mediocre Peruvian food, served in a charmless dining room by staff who really, really couldn’t give a shit if you’re having a nice time or not.
Nevertheless, we refused to let it spoil our weekend, and the birthday celebrations seemed to continue into this morning when I received our weekly ticket report from Wilton's Music Hall which contained the news that we’ve already sold a staggering 300 tickets for our Tenth Anniversary Show in May. We’ve not even announced our lineup yet guys! It’s ridiculous!
And it’s wonderful news - unless, of course, you’ve yet to book your tickets, in which case it’s much more of an urgent alarm call to get your act together, or risk missing out on our celebrations. As of writing, there are around thirty tickets left, but who knows how much longer they’ll be available, especially as we’re expecting to announce an absolutely stellar lineup in the coming weeks. Don’t delay…
It’s nearly the end of March, so I thought we’d dedicate the rest of this week’s newsletter to a smattering of links and recommendations of various bits and pieces we’ve been enjoying over the course of the month.
For instance, this very lovely piece from the team at Monocle, featuring a beautifully photographed guide to some of London’s finest bookshops including one of my favourites, Liberia in Shoreditch.
While we’re on the subject of bookshops, I enjoyed this essay from Substacker Petya K. Grady. Her substack A Reading Life is great, and this piece about how to interact with bookshops when you have the same sort of book-buying compulsion I have, was enjoyable relatable…
Hat tip to Adam, who told me to listen to this - a podcast from BBC Sounds all about How Reading Made Us from writer and broadcaster James Marriott. It’s an impassioned plea to put away our phones and get back to partaking in a pastime that is genuinely good for you. Persuasive stuff.
And if you’re inspired to pick up a book after listening to How Reading MadeUs, you could do worse than seeking out a copy of The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana, which is honestly one of the best things I’ve read in ages. It’s a short, tight thriller about a pair of young men (or are they boys?) who decide to go on a road trip together into the wilderness and… I don’t want to tell you any more for fear of taking away any of the book’s genuinely frightening impact. It’s a remarkable piece of writing, and stayed with me for days and days afterwards. Strong strong strong recommend…
(Oh, and it’s made it through to the semi-finals of The Tournament Of Books, which I mentioned in a previous newsletter, and which is getting very exciting indeed…)
This Substack essay from writer Gretchen Schrim chimed very much with one of the exercises we did at our Hidden Tracks workshop at the Southbank Centre the other weekend - putting images into your writing. Especially important when you’re telling stories orally, we’ve learnt…
Here’s a fascinating piece in The Guardian which I’ve been meaning to share with you for weeks now, but keep forgetting… It’s about William Basinski’s ambient classic record The Disintegration Loops, and you can thank me afterwards for introducing you to a genuinely amazing piece of music…
Our Album of the Week is the new(ish) one from Mitski, which I very gratefully received as a birthday present from my lovely wife, and which has been on the record player since Friday morning. Nothing’s About To Happen To You is bloody marvellous. Enjoy…
Right, that’ll do… We’re hoping to be able to announce a couple of our Anniverary Storytellers later this week, so watch this space… Otherwise we’ll be back on Monday with more from OneTrackMinds HQ…
KB.
Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here
Listen to Our Podcast | Substack | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Lima is soo overrated.
Have you seen the advert for Your Song on Channel 4? I think it’s OTM on TV!