[Insert witty and meaningful title here]

[oursin]

Answers to the unguessed items in the music meme: with bonus YouTube links.

***

O alas and woe is me, we are already into the 'suggestions for Christmas gifts' thing in Guardian Weekend this week, which includes the startling statement:
Girls love posh knickers
I am not, and possibly never have been, a girl, if so. Because if someone is ponying up c. £30 for a prezzie, there are lots of things I would rather have than a pair of Stella McCartney undergarments saying 'From London [/Paris/NYC/LA] with Love'. However 'beautifully made and non-pervy' they may be.

***

I think not, really: someone writes to the Review Feedback section apropos of Alan Turing:

Had [he] been an American, he would have become a national icon and a millionaire

Yeah, because deeply eccentric and massively smart gay blokes in the US in the 1950s were totally being feted by Joe McCarthy and his minions.

***

What is this thing that this is that because times are hard we should all be flagellating ourselves and reading SRS books, preferably non-fiction, if not, at least novels containing Big Thinkies about the world at large. Oh, Zoe Williams, please to be going away and reading the final section of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon with particular reference to the Divine Dame Rebecca's thoughts on the value of art in an era of crisis, or why Mozart and the Regent's Park Rose Garden matter when the bombs are falling. (And on your way, please to pass me The Pursuit of Love.)