Listening notes: Listen to another Manx celebrity’s song Isle of Man, performed by George Formby for the 1935 film No Limit, filmed during the islands TT Race. It’s the aural equivalent of a dirty seaside postcard. To be endured if not enjoyed. Formby is also immortalised in a statue, near to the marina in Douglas.
Listening notes: Track down anything by 1970s Liverpool band Yachts while you are reading today’s post. Perhaps Suffice to Say, Yachting Types or Hypnotising Lies. Read about them a little, and their origins. Note the nautical names/ references in their history. Find the connections with Bill Drummond and wonder why you didn’t know this before. Write your reflections in the comments below.
Little Grapefruit reaches Douglas (not Douglas Kanning, The Benefaktor), eventually.
Listening notes: Enjoy Hans Zimmer’s piece The Docking Scene, from 2014 film Interstellar. Listen out for the Harrison and Harrison 1926 organ, Temple Church, London, played by Roger Sayer.
Share a blood orange with a friend, as they’re in season. The limited period that they’re available in the shops most likely dates this piece to January or February 2025.
With apologies for the lack of posts this year.
The GANTOB Committee is now down to one member.
Book and pamphlet will be posted to all contributors to the 25 Paintings/ 52 Pamphlets project in February 2026.
That will be the end, for reasons that shall become obvious.
Until then, Little Grapefruit at Sea posts shall resume if I can drag Fiona Finks (AKA The Masters Student) away from her studies, to complete cataloging her mother’s papers.
MAUREEN KATZ, 20 January 2026
Listening notes: Listen to Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, from Bob Dylan’s album Blonde on Blonde (1966) Think about being stuck in the middle of anything. And day dream about shaggy dog stories.
Listening notes from Ali Finks: I searched for a suitable track for this post and came across Parallax by Sun Electric. It took me back to 1991. I was studying in Edinburgh at that time. During breaks from the library I would head down to the plethora of record shops in the centre of the city. As a KLF completist I was delighted to find a copy of Sun Electrics O’Locco on 12″ in Fopp. I spotted that there were remixes by The Orb and Jimmy Cauty. Or perhaps I had read that there were and went out to snare a copy. I can’t remember the details. I think it might have been on clear vinyl. I used to listen to all the tracks in one sitting while studying at night. It was hypnotic and addictive, predicting the snippets of samples peppered throughout the different versions.
Listening notes: think about songs revived and repurposed. Play any version of The Bells of St Mary’s (written 1917 by A. Emmett Adams and Douglas Furber). This was resurrected by Bing Crosby in 1945 (in a film with the same title) and many artists since. It had acquired an association with Christmas, snow falling on snow, ever since. There isn’t a yuletide meaning in the lyrics themselves.
Here Gillian Finks gives it rather a sinister twist as she imagines a threatened shipwreck just off Douglas, capital of the Isle of Man.
Listening notes: Hunt down A Camp LP (2001) by A Camp. Listen all the way through, while remembering lessons in algebra. Paint in the outline of a sketch of Manannan, his arms and hands mere tendrils of mist, enveloping an unsuspecting ferry, approaching Douglas, capital of the Isle of Man. Think about white horses in the Irish Sea, carrying St Patrick to Peel. Read about Nina Persson, Niclas Frisk and Nathan Larsson. And remember the late Mark Linkous, AKA Sparklehorse.
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