Tops and Bottoms – 7th January 2026. – Never Iron Anything

It’s only 2026! (So stop writing ‘2025’)

Have you ever slept so deeply that you awake to some bright lights and a momentary confusion? The light burns your newly opened eyes and although you’ve slept your fill there’s a tiredness that burns with heat and confusion.

No? Just me then?

Well, nevertheless, that’s how I feel at the dawn of a new year. I’m too old to feel hope. I just feel a cynical confusion.

What will happen now? What fuckin’ bollocks will I have to put up with next? If past years are to go by there’s nothing off the table. Cats are definitely living with dogs.

I’ve been dipping in and out of Hanif Kureishi most recent autobiography. It’s a dark read and one that I tend to manage fifty pages at a time when I’m out at a regular ‘Table for One’ travelling myself and me date night. I consider Kureishi to be one of our greatest storytellers. Brave and dirty and depressing – all the best things! He talks about real things even when in the land of fiction. ‘Intimacy’ is an incredible book that still resonates with me at least weekly. A road avoided for me but travelled by his characters (and possibly in part by him). It is harsh and seedy and sexual and most importantly impactfully realistic.

So I was interested in, of all the authors I read, his opinions on the modern publishing landscape and crucially here is his view of ‘Sensitivity Readers’. I’ll leave you to also make your own minds up.

‘It is part of the writer’s job to be offensive, to blaspheme, to outrage and even to insult. As Kafka says in one of his notebooks: ‘Art should be an axe to smash the sea frozen inside us.’ Culture should not be safe or complacent, and should frighten, if not alarm. It is the work of writers to turn the world upside down, to present opinions which go against prevailing trends.

It is not our job to please but to challenge, to make us think differently about our bodies, our sexuality, politics and normativity.’ – Hanif Kureishi

You’re always going to upset someone. Don’t worry and just write. Second guessing ‘insults’ and ‘offence’ will only stifle your art. But I suspect that the usual ‘Safe-Space Bullshit Merchants’ (Trade Marked and Copyrighted) will object. Wear that as a medal and smell their weak sauce desperation.

“Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.” — Voltaire (1694–1778)

Moving on.

Happy New Year Cunts!

And back to our regular programming. For those new here, there has been a rise in readership, so welcome. What I try and do every week is choose the book that is at the ‘Top’ of my reading pile and the one that is at the ‘Bottom’. I’ll occasionally add something random as well.

The Ha, Shakes Head Cover of the week.

Tops.

This is a slight cheat but I’m not technically breaking my own rules. A Bronze Age comic by one of my favourite creators. The omnibus just came out on glorious lightweight newsprint paper.

I chatted to Mr Grell last year and he told me there was going to be a gatefold cover as well. Maybe that’s on volume 2? I had big nostalgic fun reading it nevertheless.

Bottoms.