Welcome to anyone who was subscribing to the Substack version of this newsletter/blog/journal…call it what you will. I’ve decided that the world of WordPress is better for me, and hopefully for everyone else. Apologies for any clunkiness. compared to Substack, there’s a degree of hands-on learning involved. And let’s face it, I’m old and slow.

The thing is, I’d like to get older. And slower.

Here you will find an archive of everything posted on Substack in the past few years and (to my surprise, I admit, as I’d forgotten I’d done this) everything on the ‘old’ Beatcroft blog on Google’s Blogger. That goes back all the way to 2004.

So there’s 20 years of writing, talk, photographs and music. A huge chunk of my life, in other words. It’s all free to read. And will continue to be free. You can still get the new posts as emails and if you like, subscribe. But no pledges of cash

If you like, you can buy one of my books on Amazon, or wait until the new photobook from Stewart Cunningham and myself is published. There will also be a revival of my Etsy shop, selling prints, rare books, and possibly ice cream and fish. Maybe.

I’ll be exploring here the various ways of going ‘analogue hybrid’ – radio shows using vinyl, cassette and CD, photographs taken on film, songs played and sung by me, without the help of AI; the joy of typewriters and Tippex. But mainly, I’ll be trying to keep myself at least partially grounded in the physical world of stuff. Taking time. slowing down.

I hope you’ll stick around. I hope we both will. Of course, if you want to to take this opportunity to cancel, that’s fine too.

Meanwhile, here’s my Spotify playlist for July, largely informed by the soundtrack to The Sopranos, which we have been binge-watching sporadically over the last month. and by Glastonbury and my reaction to the TV coverage. Yeah, I know I said I was going analogue, but…