The neighbourhood. Quiet, curving streets where children play in the road, making way now and then for a wood-panelled station wagon or Chevy pick-up. The houses are probably painted white, with wh…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
2 posts published by Ray Newman during October 2025| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
It’s cowardice, isn’t it? That instinct that draws horror fans to old movies; camp, arch, silly films; and contemporary films set in the comforting warmth of the hand-knitted past. The word ‘cosy’ …| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
I’ve been reading about the end of the world, walking from Kings Cross to Wapping, and making zines. This blog is what I do instead of starting yet another Substack newsletter. You can subscribe to this blog (enter an email address, get updates when I post) using the widget at the bottom of the screen. […]| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
Hotels are fundamentally weird places and the sense of unease they prompt is powerful fuel for weird stories. Even before we consider aspects of the uncanny, and the hotel in weird fiction, the ver…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
1 post published by Ray Newman during September 2025| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
I’ve found the Blu-ray box set Shadows in the Fog to be a great introduction to the West German Krimi genre despite, on paper, being a collection of also-rans. ‘Krimi’ is a description applied to a…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
What happens when angry young men are more than angry? These three roughly contemporary books give us portraits of youths struggling with their own murderous instincts. I came to The Furnished Room, Big Man and The Dead Beat one at a time after finding tatty old paperbacks in charity shops or roadside book swap boxes. […]| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is a fascinating story. If nothing else it was published in 1872, long before Dracula, and was clearly a huge influence on Bram Stoker. When the team at the Vampire Vide…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
3 posts published by Ray Newman during August 2025| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
You stop calling the police after a while, d’yer know worrimean? What’s the point? Either they don’t come at all, or by the time they turn up, the bloody thing’s gone to ground. They think we’re daft enough up here as it is, up at Longwood. Normal for Longwood – NFL. That’s what the doctors […]| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
Penny does not expect to hear the roar of an invisible dragon on the path on the edge of a potato field. It takes a moment for her to think to look up. The hot air balloon passing above her head is too low and too large. Its white sphere stands out sharply against dense […]| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
They – that is, the bastards that would grind you down – cannot stop you making music. They can stop you from making a living from it, though. Think of all those bands who somehow never seemed to g…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
1 post published by Ray Newman during February 2025| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
Watching the film Hundreds of Beavers and a product of Shakespeare’s Henry V in the same week was something of a crash course in the suspension of disbelief. Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik, 2022) is a slapstick comedy about a fur trapper (Ryland Tews) using ever more elaborate methods to catch beavers. Except the beavers […]| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
London, like New York, is often too busy, and too much in flux, to play itself on film. So, time after time, filmmakers rebuild it on backlots – with varying degrees of accuracy. Each of these othe…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
Alan ‘Ginge’ Newman has died at the age of 75 after a lifetime of making and thinking about music. He wasn’t a full-time musician, however, because like most people he had to work to support his fa…| Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart
