Oliver Lough

@olough

Humanitarian research and M&E; Kyiv, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Erbil, SOAS, Kabul, Beijing; feminist; Londoner. Everything is on fire or worse. All opinions my own. He/him

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Oliver Lough@olough· 4d

Look lads we all loved Spaghetti House but I think you're reading a bit too much into its closure

The boarded up Spaghetti House at the bottom of Argyll Street. Across the window is scrawled (twice) LONDON IS FUCKED. It's not, of course.

Oliver Lough@olough· 18d

Oh someone had a *lot* of fun with this

A road sign saying Compton, followed by a list of the comparative merits and demerits of Compton vs Newhaven

Oliver Lough@olough· 18d

There you go mate

Oliver Lough@olough· 18d

Still struggling to work out if any of it was deliberately funny or not. Like...the third (fourth?) time they end up sprinting back to the ships chased by some new horror is fully into "another fine mess" territory

Laurel and Hardy sprinting away from the Cyclops, probably

Oliver Lough@olough· Jun 30

Yeah sorry this is just an objectively bonkers thing to write. In other news, why did Oh What A Lovely War not foreground the Serbian war experience? Where were the Russians in Blackadder Goes Forth?

"What does it say about Britain in 2014 that we still narrowly remember our own dead and do not mourn the German or French or Russian victims? The crowds come to remember – but we should not be remembering only our own. It’s the inward-looking mood that lets Ukip thrive" it says that we're a nation state with a specific experience and memory of the great war Jonathan, you gigantic twerp.

Oliver Lough@olough· Jun 26

Look what they took from us etc etc

Three plastic shot glasses with tear-off lids in different colours. They have grooves at the bottom so you can stick them round the lip of your pint, like a completely normal person.

Oliver Lough@olough· Jun 25

Don't mind me just being bullied by social media into changing my shirt, completely normal and fine

An idiotic, Miami gangster-looking button down shirt. I have very few regrets.

Oliver Lough@olough· May 18

Ah, love a browse through a nice rural antique shop, always nice to see what hidden geWHAT THE FUCK

THE BROWN BREAD SOLD HERE IS THE REAL OLD-FASHIONED FARMHOUSE BREAD AS SUPPLIED TO AND RECOMMENDED TO [totally normal, not prominent fascist] SIR OSWALD MODLEY, BART.

Oliver Lough@olough· May 2

Post your warning sign

FUMES (hand painted, jaunty yellow upside down triangle on a blue square with a 70s-looking dial switch above. Something to do with whisky distilling being an alarmingly explosive process)

Oliver Lough@olough· Apr 21

Incredible shot (from wikipedia) of Powerful with the Titanic in the background. Quite the long boi

Three ships silouhetted against a choppy sea from left to right, the stubby little HMS Repulse, Titanic doing its thing a fair way back, and HMS Powerful to the left doing its damndest to look like what Brunel would've come up with if they'd have just let him do one more liner bro please bro last one I promise bro.

Oliver Lough@olough· Apr 17

Lol yeah right that's just what Dracula *would* say

A google satellite map of the coast. A point of interest is labelled "Old Slains Castle (Not Dracula castle)." Sure. Absolutely. Completely believable and not in any way suspicious.

Oliver Lough@olough· Mar 29

Erm @kagi.com how do I stop results from X topping my search in a little special box of their own? Sort of paying you specifically to avoid this sort of nonsense.

Oliver Lough@olough· Mar 17

"...processed food, and a political environment hostile to masculine vitality"

Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, upon realising that General Ripper is a grade-A fucking lunatic who is going to get us all killed.

Oliver Lough@olough· Mar 3

How very dare you

Josie and the Pussycats: Music from the Motion Picture

Oliver Lough@olough· Feb 24

Come for the investigative reporting, stay for the kind of robust detail you'd never get in the Standard

Vehicle owners will be required to have premises with fire risk assessments, record keeping and background checks for staff. (The fire risk element is particularly notable following a fire at a pedicab garage in Southwark which resulted, according to sources who spoke to London Centric, in a number of naked people "being intimate" on the premises having to flee the burning building.)

Oliver Lough@olough· Feb 7

serendipitous...

Above: "this is the one obvious problem about Ed Milliband as PM is that it really would make the opposition's argument that there should be a GE stronger - 'this bloke stood in 2015 and lost, you can't just impose him on the country' - but aside from that?
...............choo choo"
Below: a picture of a bald, white bearded man in a tweed suit _extremely enthusiastically_ bestriding a model train running through a garden in spring.

Oliver Lough@olough· Feb 7

Repost with a photo of yours that you think would make a good album cover

Apartment blocks barely visible at night during a power cut. A few dim lights from their windows cut through the dark

Oliver Lough@olough· Jan 14

In fairness take the main gun off and this is basically the Moskva. Which is to say, you're not wrong.

The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, anachronistically afloat.

Oliver Lough@olough· Dec 29

Racing in Kyiv the morning after an air raid. Incredibly welcoming, resilient (if slightly bonkers) cycling scene out here.

A group of cyclists in racing kit climbs up a hill

Bikes line up under the starting banner (which collapsed just after they fired the gun) in Kontraktova Square, Kyiv

Oliver Lough@olough· Dec 10

The black cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand. It can't get you, you're safe now. Probably.

An idyllic view of a European city, surveying a terra cotta roofscape the encircling hills beyond and a perfect early-summer azure sky. At the centre, a black cathedral - no, a cathedral-shaped _absence_ of pure void, punctures the image, making the eyes itch. It can't get you. Probably.

Oliver Lough@olough· Jun 1

Just gonna leave this here, for no reason.

A genuinely horrifying, politically delusional, crudely painted picture of Tony Blair. It referencesthe early Russian communist era propaganda poster "Have you signed up with the volunteers?". Tonty is dressed in red peasant's robes, waving a red flag in front of the Palace of Westminster under a dark sky, with the 2005 election slogan "FORWARD NOT BACK" daubed over the bottom, which is heavily water damaged since the whole thing has been left out in the street. The painting, is meant to be complimentary, I think?

Oliver Lough@olough· Apr 21

Hmm. Hmmmmmm.

Liz Truss shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth ii shortly before the latter's death in deeply suspicious circumstances. Coincidence? Who can say.

Oliver Lough@olough· Apr 18

In remarkably similar vein (albeit not dedicated to the Toby Carvery, Enfield), Lil Bowes-Lyon's "a finch"

A Finch in 1932 by Lil Bowes-Lyon

A finch swung on a twig, that loved
Her tender weight and seemed to sing
Long after its lodger had removed;
Oh commerce brief and dear as spring.

I saw the twig lift again, light-embowered,
And the bird flitting to the woord
With a breast cool as though a cowslip flowered;

They had done the year good.

Oliver Lough@olough· Mar 6

Indeed. This doesn't need to be hard, lads

A world war II poster by Abram Grames in dynamic, clean, Festival of Britain style. On the left, run-down Victorian brick terraces against a dark sky. On the right, a more abstract rendering of a white, 5-storey, triple-wide block of flats in a green field with a tree, against a blue background. The legend reads "Your Britain: Fight For it Now"

Oliver Lough@olough· Feb 28

"Oh hello I'm Julian and this is my friend Sandy"

Keir Starmer, at an eagle-besealed dais, standing in front of twin US and UK flags: "there's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom"

Oliver Lough@olough· Feb 28

Final sign-off on USAID contract terminations. Going out with both middle fingers raised to all their partners and beneficiaries. Pure class.

Thank you for partnering with USAID and God Bless America.

Oliver Lough@olough· Feb 6

A black and white landscape of large black spikes against grey clouds. This is not a place of honour. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.

Oliver Lough@olough· Jan 24

That is...certainly *a* take on the news USAID is basically slamming the handbrake on its (yes! Deeply problematic! We know!) entire global portfolio

A Bluesky user responds to the news that USAID is freezing all funding and issuing stop-work orders with, "Yah boo, sucks to be you", or words to that effect

Oliver Lough@olough· Jan 10

Loved stumbling across this artefact somewhere on Southwark St, from back when it was still provisionally "Tate Gallery of Modern Art"

Worn and cracked paving slabs of different styles and vintages, among which is spelled out an advert for the "Tate Gallery of Modern Art Opening 2000"

Oliver Lough@olough· Dec 29

Found this peeking out between stacks of How to Think Like a Bellend, SAS Fairytales and complete works of S. Rooney at execrable airport bookshop. Lyrical scifi Romeo and Juliet, thanks @amalelmohtar.com and @maxgladstone.bsky.social for taking the edge off the 2-day schlep home