Three recent coincidences

1. R had been telling me about Unit Editions, ‘a progressive publishing venture producing high-quality, affordable books on graphic design and visual culture’, that I’d never heard of, the day before. The next evening R popped round the flat (a rare occurrence btw, being allergic to my cat, Casper). A parcel was waiting for me in the doorway. I opened it up and it was a beautiful book called Letraset: The DIY Typography Revolution (with ‘free’ poster), published by, yup, you guessed it, Unit Editions and costing £55 (I must take umbrage at the ‘affordable’ claim in their blurb). I hadn’t ordered it; it was sent by an old friend I hadn’t heard from for years, completely out of the blue. He thought I’d like it.

2. S and I were sipping our Greggs coffees on a bench behind a church in Greenwich. We were talking about Krautrock, Can and Stockhausen, then onto atonality and minimalism; then came Carrie and Brian de Palma, followed by Dario Argento and Italian giallo films which led on to Peter Strickland via Berberian Sound Studio and the Duke of Burgundy, then vampire films and finally, somehow, the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Fear Eats the Soul is one of my favourite films, ever). Five minutes later we were strolling around the secondhand market across the road, and S spotted a DVD box set of Fassbinder films. What are the chances? S didn’t want it, so I snapped it up immediately. 9 Fassbinder films! For £5! Barngain.

3. I was moaning on the phone to H about many things, including this very blog. 12 years I’ve been writing it, I said, and virtually no comments, no feedback, nothing in return (I blame social media for the death of blogs). Why do I bother writing it, I asked her. She didn’t know. I didn’t know. Anyway, just as I said no one ever leaves a comment, I was checking my emails and a notification came up that C (for Caspar; different spelling to my cat, so, no, they’re not one and the same) had left a comment on a recent post. Faith in mankind was temporarily restored.