Copy

The Full Lid
18th December 2020

It's Friday. It's 5pm GMT. It's the last Friday before Christmas. Here's your final Full Lid of 2020 - a bumper crop of positive content to see you out the other side of the festive period.

Your interstitials this week are some of my favorite serotonin dispensers of the year. Enjoy!

Contents

In Strange Woods, Strange Truths
Sounds All Around
Can Androids Pray: Blue
Smiley's Other People
Signal Boost
Competition Time! Win New Mutants!
Where You Can Find Me This Week
The Department of Esoteric Printed Goods
Housekeeping
Happy March 268th
Signing Off / Playing Out

In Strange Woods, Strange Truths

Editor's note: spoilers


There is a tax for living in small towns. No one tells you, but everyone knows. The tax is a life. It’s a generational toll, that horrific moment where the law of averages collides with the natural world. I grew up on an island. We lost a kid to the sea one generation, and to cancer the one before that. He was one of my closest friends, his loss was my first encounter with mortality. An event that shaped my life at 16. To some extent, it still does.

In Stranger Woods revolves around a similar event. In a small Minnesota town, Jacob goes into the woods, vanishes, and then dies. His loss shatters the town, and his younger sister Peregrine (Lily Mae-Harrington) finds herself drawn to the local survivalist, Howl. Voiced by Patrick Page, Howl is a Tom Waits'ian ideal who looks like an archetypal Unsub but is bent double under tragedy of his own.

In an effort to understand her loss, and to punch mortality in the face, Peregrine persuades him to teach her survival skills. Over the following months, her friends get caught up in the same, curious orbit. The determined, intense, furious young woman. The laconic, reluctant outsider.  A man who represents both the edge of the village and the life that lies beyond it -- the life they blame for the death of their friend.

Working together, the group find something bigger than the town, but for Peregrine that isn’t the point. The point is The Final, when Howl will drive them into the woods and leave them alone with no idea where they are, minimal resources and one task: make it home alive.
Carlos Garcia's show art, above, is encapsulates everything about the show in a perfect, frozen nutshell. A young figure, well equipped but still small and fragile, faces the weather and the woods which serve as both metaphorical and literal barrier. If Peregrine beats the final she can go home. But if Peregrine beats the final she won't want to. Another truth of small town life reveals itself: growing up is growing out and sometimes that takes tremendous courage to realize.

Courage is one of the defining traits of the show, especially in the gutsy way it mixes two formats. Presented by co-creator Brett Ryback as very much a straight down-the-middle Bear Brook style true crime story, there's the distanced, respectful tone, the sense of lurking menace and tragedy. Until suddenly things take a turn. The liminal space of the woods becomes the liminal space of genre. The theme tune becomes the refrain of the first song, mutating from a joyously lumpy substitute teacher comedy moment to escalating levels of menace. We get ghosts of rhyming structure in Brett's dialogue and suddenly he belts out a single line.

After that, everything's changed.

The narrator is in the story. The footprints lead out into the woods. We're somewhere new and we are not prepared. That first song especially is fantastic, shifting from a phone conversation to recollections from witnesses to Brett's still (mostly) distanced asides. The chaos of the unprecedented and the desperate need to know colliding with the comforting lie of the small town.

Creators Jeff Luppino-Esposito, Brett Ryback, and Matt Sav continually map the emotional state of the characters onto the songs and vice versa. Peregrine, played by Lily Mae Harrington, wraps the refrain of Jacob's last advice to her ('If something happens, come find me') like a garland of thorns, living inside the nebulous, undefined failure she grapples with. Was it her perfect, doomed brother? Herself? Or the lifestyle she's rejecting, the literal teenage wasteland?

I've had the privilege of listening to the first two episodes of In Strange Woods and it's remarkable. While it isn't the first podcast musical, it's unique style allows it to tackle the vast expanses of grief and wilderness with the same determination as Peregrine but far more preparation. There is something important in the woods, something vital and dangerous that the show, and Peregrine, are going out to face. I have no idea what they'll find. I have no doubt I'll be listening.

In Strange Woods is a compelling, tragic, funny musical audio drama, unlike anything else I've heard this year. Give it a try. It's available wherever your get your podcasts.
The Fun: Seagulls

CONTENT WARNING: Profanity; seagulls; Avril Lavigne

Sounds All Around

 
So it turns out every pig I've ever met is German. In the opening pages of Dr. James Chapman's ridiculously entertaining and informative Sounds All Around, he mentions that in Germany pigs in children's books go GRUNZ! not OINK.

Look at it. Look at that word!
GRUNZ!

How great, and inherently piggish, is that?!

The book is a guide to onomatopoeia -- words that imitate sounds. Chapman has some wonders for us from the start. The first few pages are fantastic spreads of animals, exploring the different noises they're perceived to make in different countries. French dogs? 'OUAF!'. Romanian dogs, brilliantly, 'HAM!' And it's not just our canine friends who have some interesting variations. Mice vary from 'PIP PIP' in Swedish to 'JEET' in Thai. Cats? Pretty much variations on 'MEOW' the world over although I am fond of the Japanese 'NYAN'. Oh 'PIP PIP' turns up with multiple animals, and each time, it's the fanciest one. Hat and monocle, the whole bit. 
It's not just the animal kingdom where this happens. Lithuanian cowboys guns go 'POKST!' and, when they fail to hit their Hindi opponent the noise is 'DISHKIYAON!' which you can actually hear right? Plus it's a much cooler word than the admittedly already quite cool 'ricochet.'

Animals, weather, vehicles and humans all get this delightful level of exploration. The Hindi word 'GOBAGOB' for eating is now officially my new favorite thing while the Indonesian 'HOAM' for yawn is what I suspect I'll be hearing from now on.

Time and again, Chapman makes you laugh not at foreign words, but with the joy of discovering them and how they work in your native language. The message is clear; language is a puzzle we all get to solve and these words are some of the most entertaining pieces we use. 

Chapman's illustrations brim with energy, life and joy as they carry you between subjects. Every page will show you words you didn't know before, and the odds are high each made will alsomake you laugh while you take notes. Language is a universal tool, celebrated by Chapman by inviting us to explore their differences. Dive in. You'll love this sweet little book, or might know a child that would enjoy it just as much.

Sounds All Around is widely available now. Perfect for everyone in your family who wants to learn different words for sneeze.
The Fun: Winston the Puzzler (New Girl)
 
Has genuinely made me laugh every time I watch it. I've just started in on New Girl, inspired at least in part by this scene.

Can Androids Pray: Blue


Editor's note: spoilers; content warning for confronting death


Cortney has a problem. Her fuel lines have been cut, her mech is immobile. Beatrice has a problem. Her mech's arms are shorted out. Both of them have been left for dead in the wastelands of what used to be Earth with only each other to talk to. Oh there is also the issue of the toxic atmosphere, their dwindling air supplies, and the severed fuel line that's going to blow them both apart just as the sun rises.

So they do what anyone would do in this situation: they chat.

Xalavier Nelson Jr, Natalie Clayton and Priscilla Snow use the ticking clock and the gentle absurdity of survival to brutal effect. There is no way out, nothing to do but wait for the sun to rise, and the game's constantly increasing daylight is a subtle, brilliant ratcheting of tension.

You 'steer' by picking from various dialogue options as Cortney, a pleasant, familiar interface. Think the Mass Effect dialogue wheel as control system. It works brilliantly because all you can control are your choices, your emotional responses. This may be the last time you talk to anyone, and every answer you give is shaped by that fact. You can be forgiving, bitchy, calm. You can change whenever you want as the stages of grief map onto the ticking clock map on to the nature of the war you're fighting.

Nothing can be done. Everything matters.
Can Androids Pray as a game has a heavy tread but a light touch. It's often very funny -- the two pilots snipe at one another in a manner which is intimate, relaxed and open to interpretation. The dialogue is light but deep. And the sun is always rising.

The game also trusts you. Cortney's mind is essentially your vehicle for these last moments of her life, and the choices you make as to how she reacts give the game plenty of contrast. Her final confrontation with Beatrice is redolent with meaning, and the ending is a textbook mirror of interpretation. This is either a small, absurd tragedy wrapped inside a vast one, or it's just two frontline soldiers at the end of their lives. Either way, it's never forgettable.

Liminal interactive storytelling at its best, Can Androids Pray doesn't care whether it's a short story that moves like a game or a game that reads like a short story. It packs more into it's running time than games a hundred times it's size. I'm delighted to have had the opportunity to play it and especially delighted to have found it now, finished my gaming year on a clear, high note.

Can Androids Pray is available in two shading variants which change the aesthetic but nothing else. You can find both variants here, or better still as part of this bundle for an excellent cause. It's available for PC, Switch, PS4, and XBox. It's currently a frankly embarrassing £1.16 on the Switch. Money more than well spent.

New reader? Looking for a back issue?
Buy me a coffee?

Website Website
Twitter Twitter
Instagram Instagram
Facebook Facebook

Smiley's Other People


John Le Carre, an architect of contemporary espionage fiction, passed away this week. I wrote this piece nearly eight years ago after seeing Skyfall, the most Le Carreian of the modern Bonds and still my favorite. 

I reprint it here in the hopes of honoring both Le Carre's epochal work and his greatest character. Our deepest sympathies to Le Carre's family, and gratitude for his life's work. May he rest in power and his memory be a blessing.
 

Editor's note: spoilers for Skyfall


Old spies don’t die, they just go deeper under cover.

He’d said that to her, his skin like paper, the oxygen mask capturing the words so he had to fight to push them out. She’d smiled and nodded, that precise, disciplined gesture that she only allowed herself when it was all she could do. She was going to lose him soon, and then what the hell did she have?

The work. And that ridiculous bulldog.

She grieved, because it was all she knew how to do. Took the statutory time off. Came back a week earlier than she should or wanted, one part because she needed something to do other than pack up his things. Another part because it was a boy’s club and that meant the rules were different for her. She didn’t like it, in fact it made her bloody furious, but it was what it was.

So she came back and worked hard, and Berlin happened, then Hong Kong and then… Thames House, and an office so vast she was reasonably certain her student flat at Oxford could have fitted inside four times over.

Gunfire. Music. A laughing man, and one who never laughed.

‘Here we go, ma’am.’ The BMW pulled up and she looked around. London at night, a handful of stars scattered across black velvet. Dreadful poetry, he’d have hated it, but it was what it always reminded her of. She loved this city, purely and completely, in a way that only someone not born here could ever achieve. London was a sanctuary for her, a place to return to after her time on the frontlines, a castle as inviolate and impregnable as that ridiculous bloody office.

Rain. A flash of heat. Thames House’s upper storey engulfed in flame.

‘Ma’am?’ The driver -- polite, courteous and on a timetable. She nodded, smiled tightly. ‘Sorry, thank you Mr?’ His voice, calm and deep and a little amused. ‘Conrad, ma’am. Just call me Conrad.’

‘Thank you, Conrad.’ The door was opened for her, and she stepped out onto the street, her breath already misting. In front of her, the club’s black and gold awning, in, of course, Times New Roman:

The Diogenes Club

She set herself. Time to be amongst them. Boy’s club be damned, she thought as she stepped inside. The black and white marble floor echoed beneath her feet and nearby, someone was playing ‘As Time Goes By’ on a piano which, she was pleased to realize, was actually tuned. The stairs in front of her swept up and to the right with Gene Kelly grace. and the hall opened on either side of her, bar on the left, dining room on the right.

‘Good evening, ma’am. Your table’s waiting.’ The butler, precise, neat, stupidly young. She nodded assent, thanks, and followed him. Checked the exits, checked the number of people, worked out who to get through, how best to cause a scene. Always working, always aware. That’s what she told her boys and girls, back when she was young enough to think of them like that. Back before Hong Kong. Before London.

A shadow against the window and just a moment, a sliver, where she let herself be ready. This was it, this was death. Then she recognised it.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘Enjoying death.’

Through ranks of full tables, all clattering with upper class dinner conversation. She recognised a few faces: the haunted, brilliant Northern cryptographer scribbling on a napkin; the top hat and tailed gentleman, his butler ever on standby; and the three bright young men in the corner, talking animatedly when they weren’t frantically checking to see who was listening.  The two intense young Americans, one accompanied, one alone, each with their back to the walls and their eyes on the exits. The pantheon of animals, the Great and the Good of modern espionage.

‘Your table, ma’am.’ A good one too -- elevated, with a view out across the river. Set for two, although she was the first to arrive. French windows three steps down, put a chair through them and dive into the bloody river if she needed to. Always know your exits.

Going into battle in front of politicians younger than her children would have been. All feral eyes and desperate, venal sound bites. Once, she’d called one of her agents a dinosaur. She knew how he felt now.

‘A drink, ma’am?’

‘Scotch, 12 year, Macallan please. On the rocks.’

‘Of course.’ She sat down, didn’t slump, watched the river. From here you could almost see Thames House (burning), almost hear the Underground (a ripple of detonation, a scream of metal as the train leaves the-). She loved it, the feeling of being in the city but not of the city. She closed her eyes and breathed out for a long time.

‘Good evening, ma’am.’

Nothing had startled her since Hong Kong. She opened her eyes to a short, precise man, his face somewhat froggish, walking towards her. He was wearing a suit and tie and, behind him, she could see the butler making his way back down the club with a ghastly sou’wester slung over one arm. She stood, extended a hand.

‘Good evening, I don’t think we’ve met.’

The man shook her hand and smiled widely. ‘No, we haven’t. I was slightly before your time. Did Conrad look after you on the journey here?’

‘Yes, yes of course.’ She blinked and watched the small man pick up a menu and begin flicking through it. ‘I was surprised to be invited, to be honest.’

From behind the menu, his voice was flat, a little tinny. ‘I’m honestly surprised you weren’t invited sooner. The first female head, not just of Section, but of MI:5 itself. A Cold War warrior, to boot. You spent time in Berlin I believe, just as the wall fell?’

He already knew. He was being polite. She let him. ‘I was station chief there, yes.’

‘I love Berlin.’ He put the menu down. ‘May I recommend the steak and kidney pie?’

‘I was thinking the wiener schnitzel.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Nothing from Hong Kong?’

A smiling, perfect face, sunk in on itself. Love and hate clouding the back of his eyes.

‘I prefer not to talk about my time there.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘I didn’t catch your name.’ Don’t railroad me, sonny.

‘No you didn’t, perhaps later. Why not Hong Kong?’

‘I lost my first agent there.’

He nodded, eyes genuine, sympathetic. ‘The worst thing we can do is lose one of our flock. How did you cope?’

‘Slowly.’

The words forming now, and she could feel her husband next to her. This was going to be easy, this was going to be the last thing she had to do. Her voice didn’t crack at all:

“…and though

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are…
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

‘What was his name?’

‘Silva. Raoul Silva.’

‘Was he a good man?’

‘No.’ Back under control now.

‘Did you see him again?’

A burning house, a frozen moor, Silva pressed against her, weeping.

That would be quite enough of that.

She leant forward, tone on the edge of forceful. ‘I’d like some answers please.’

He nodded. ‘I thought you might.’

Blood pouring from her side, Kincade nearby.

‘I’m dead.’

Another nod.

‘Why am I here?’

‘You mean why aren’t you with your husband?’

She glared at him. ‘Quite.’

He took his glasses off, cleaned them with the fat end of his tie. ‘For the same reason I’m not with my wife. People in our line of work keep themselves hidden for so long that we leave a mark on the world, when we go. You are with your husband, in every sense you wish to be. This club, your memories, are just an echo of your passing.’ He smiled. ‘I like to think of it like this. We struggle our whole lives to keep ourselves concealed. In death, we’re finally allowed to leave our mark.’

She was taking this surprisingly well, she thought. ‘How long does it last?’

‘As long as you want it to. Mycroft has a theory about that, you can meet him later.’

‘What do you do here?’

‘Eat, drink, talk.’ He smiled again. ‘Play chess.’

She laughed, clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘How utterly stereotypical.’

His smile widened. ‘The Russians even drink vodka.’

This laugh escaped, pure and loud and completely innocent. She hadn’t laughed that way in years. Her companion leant forward, his face suddenly serious. ‘You did great work, for a long time. We’re all very proud of you.’ She nodded, closed her eyes, feeling it rise and hating herself for letting it show.

When the man spoke again it was softly, kindly. ‘I find it’s not the circumstances of our departure that matters but the way in which people treated us before that. I know what happened at the Select Committee, I saw how quickly your agents, and your successor, rushed to defend you. I know what he in particular did to not only protect you, but to secure your legacy.’

Her bulldog. A late night in the office, updating her will. A single, glorious moment of mischief. He’d HATE it.

‘I was lucky.’

‘You were good. Better than most.’

‘Better than you?’ A challenge to her voice, but the tiniest hint of mischief. The man inclined his head, conceding. ‘Perhaps a game of chess later?’ She chuckled and gratefully accepted her Macallan as the waiter set it down in front of her, a glass of red in front of her guest. He raised it and she followed suit. ‘What’s the toast?’

‘To old spies. And new opportunities.’

Her husband, his skin like paper. Her office. Her people rushing to protect her. Her bulldog. Scarred and broken and still inviolate, still standing guard.

‘Though much is taken, much abides.’

She raised her glass. The Macallan had never tasted so fine.

The Fun: Goddamn (Tyga feat. A Boogie wit da Hoodie)

AK Editx has been turning in these balletic mashups of Marvel movies all year. This is one of my favorites.

Want More?

Signal Boost

 

Adopt-A-Book


Editor's note: Last entry for this batch, folks! We'll be starting January with new picks. Each of these would make worthy additions to your holiday reading!

Books and Periodicals

Crowdfunding

Events

  • This very night! Friend of the Lid Gemma Amor and a host of other horror luminaries join forces to terrify you! Festively! With Ghost Stories for Christmas in support of the MS Society.

Games

Podcasts

  • Eli Esdi brings news of Station Arcadia, a new queer audio drama podcast, telling stories of a world where multiple denominations of punk live side by side.
  • Our good friends at Shadows at the Door have just released their first two soundtracks, both composed by WeTalkofDreams! Check them out here
  • And speaking of the Shadows team, they're also running a festive livestream performance on December 27th of 'The Victorian Seance' by Gemma Amor. It'll be 8.30pm GMT/ 3.30pm EST. Details to be revealed soon -- watch their and Gemma's twitters for details.
  • Perhaps not a podcast but certainly podcastesque, Journey into Time is a full cast imagining of the lost Peter Cushing Doctor Who radio pilot.

The Magnus Archives

That's this week's Signal Boost, folks. If you have a project you'd like to see here get in touch.

Competition Time!
Win New Mutants on DVD!


We're closing the year with our first ever Full Lid competition! To celebrate the exciting Home Entertainment release of THE NEW MUTANTS, we have two DVDs to giveaway! Here's the synopsis:
 
In this action-filled film, five young people who demonstrate special powers are forced to undergo treatment at a secret institution – allegedly to cure them of the dangers of their powers. But it’s soon clear that their containment is part of a much bigger battle between the forces of good and evil!
 
The New Mutants will be available on digital from 28th December 2020, and on DVD, Blu-ray™ and 4K Ultra HD™ on 4th January 2021.
 
These DVDS are region-encoded for Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. The Blu-ray will also be available across these countries, with the exception of Poland.  
 
COMPETITION DETAILS

I'm not limiting the competition to participants in these countries only, but please do note the regions where the DVDs are encoded.

For your chance to win a copy of New Mutants on DVD, all you have to do is answer the following question:
 
What comic plotline does The New Mutants loosely adapt?
 
Submit your answer to thefulllidcompetition@outlook.com. The lucky winners will be announced in the New Year!
The Fun: Mr. Nobody Challenges Doom Patrol
 
The amount of fun Alan Tudyk is having should be an inspiration to us all. He's amazing in Doom Patrol, and the relish with which he chews out lines like: 'This bag of HAM is Cliff Steele' makes me laugh every time I hear it. I'm HUGELY looking forward to Resident Alien.

Where You Can Find Me This Week

 I'm Varric Tethras, buy my books

  • My big project for 2020 was this purring engine of analysis. The Black Archive team are a pleasure to work for and I was delighted to get elbows deep in this vast, intensely post-modern and ambitious story. Day of the Doctor is everything about the show I dislike (LOOK AT THE CLEVER MAN, wilfully obtuse plotting. archaic callbacks) benevolently weaponized into a forge to create its own future. I learned a lot more about the episode in writing this and hopefully I'll teach you a little bit too. The eBook is available now, and with print copies following later this month. Perhaps a holiday gift for the Who fan in your life?

Twitch

Podcast Land


PseudoPod 691: Half-Men of the Night Marie

Department of Received Esoteric Printed Goods


Left to right and top to bottom:
  • Our Lady of Hatred, by Catherine Lord, curated by Johnny Mains. An previously-unknown Victorian horror author uncovered and collated for the first time.
  • The Governess, a limited edition chapbook by Stephen Gallagher that returns to Professor Challenger one final time...
  • Heart is the latest RPG by Grant Howitt and Christopher Taylor of Rowan, Rook and Decard. It casts players into the biotechnological Hell beneath their last game, Spire.
  • Finally, Logan Dean's The Company is a tight, fun game about the people who get the call when things really go south.

Find me on The Online

Website Website
Twitter Twitter
Instagram Instagram
Facebook Facebook

Housekeeping


One last time!
  • This is the last TFL of 2020 -- we're taking 25th December and 1st January 2021 as a holiday break. Weekly issues will resume 8th January.
  • I'm under 150 subscribers away now from my goal for the year. If you like this issue, maybe share with a friend and see if they want to sign up? Thanks!

Happy March 268th


At this time of year, everyone's thoughts turn to the outgoing year. Which is why I was sorely tempted to just post this photo and walk away:
But if 2020 has done one thing besides turn the ides of March into the IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDES of March it's this -- we can hold multiple truths to be self evident, simultaneously, even as they contradict each other. Oxymorons taken to the nth. degree. Or to put it another way:
 
I'm not okay. None of us are. 
And yet.

That space between those two sentences? I feel like I've lived there since March. I've had days where I've fallen apart, we all have, and days where I hit the wall so hard, and bounced so much harder, than I thought possible. This is a year where difficult has become the new easy and where almost impossible has become the new difficult. 

Nothing is easy. That's the first thing 2020 taught me.

I go outside every day -- that's the second. I'm about to do so now in fact, mask on (of course). Because I don't have a bank garden or even a patio, so every day it's a trek and an ordeal and a risk, but it's worth it. I spend a couple of minutes reminding myself what fresh air is, letting my mind drift. The longer trips once or twice a week, I'm still working on. I still have to give myself 10 minutes of 'pre-breathing' in the mask, to fight down the panic response. But so far I've always won.

Another thing it's taught me? Be busy. A mixed blessing of a lesson, for sure, but one that suits me. On March 1st we hadn't streamed before. On March 290th we took delivery of the latest costume for our sourdough starter while I prepped for the third stave of A Christmas Carol. We're vastly lucky to have the ability to work in this way, and we're also vastly grateful for it. Not just because it's a fun thing to do that has helped keep us sane but because we have a SOURDOUGH STARTER with COSTUMES. If that isn't peak weird 2020 I don't (want to) know what is.

The final thing 2020 taught me is to be kind, which is a less instantly annoying way of saying 'Forgive yourself.' What we were hit with this year is an unprecedented wave of societal change, one that's not finished with us yet. Survival is enough. Survival takes energy and work, and no one is superhuman. Not even you. 

Not even me.

Be kind to yourself. Forgive yourself your coping strategies, your slipped aspirational deadlines, your projects that fell along the wayside as lockdowns and school closures and recessions took hold. You deserve patience and kindness and forgiveness this year more than ever, most of all from yourself.

Because while it's March 268th, it's also, finally, December 18th. And soon all of this will begin, at last, to fade.

Happy March 268th. Happy December 18th. Happy New Year. See you in the better days ahead.

Signing Off / Playing Out


And that? Is our episode for the year. TFL will be back in the New Year although we reserve the right to maybe surprise you between now and then...

Thank you. For reading. For signal boosting. For helping give me an outlet to help others. It's made a difference, and that in turn helps me more than I can say. Also more ketchup in 2021, promise.

VAST relentless thanks to the love of my life, the amazing Marguerite Kenner. She's our two fisted editor, my partner in all things and the best person I know. I love you, baby. Happy Christmas!


Editor's note: Love you too, sweetie!


The Team KennerStuart Instagram is about to have A WHOLE lot of Christmas food in it, just like me! The Twitter abides.

This work is produced for free. If you like what you read please consider dropping something in the tip jar or sign up for The Full Lid Plus, my monthly subscription substack where I've been swimming in the murky, complicated depths of the Disney+ back catalog.

Playing us out this week is one of my patron saints, saying the quiet part, very very loud. You'll want to turn the volume up on this. Maybe make a cup of tea first. Savor it.

Thanks John, and thank you! Not just for reading but because this?
is a Full Lid.
Copyright Alasdair Stuart © 2020 -- All rights reserved

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.
 






This email was sent to <<Email Address>>
why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences
Agathon Towers · Cheapside Road · Reading, Berkshire RG1 7AG · United Kingdom

Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp