iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 05/09/2026

Have almost given up on charity shops for records, but stumbled across these in Tulse Hill today, tenner the lot. Love the owner's note in the Grossman.

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 02/09/2026

I was down in Sussex a couple of weeks ago and stumbled across the pump he installed in Fulking. Glad to say the spring was still bubbling away.

130

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 01/09/2026

I am so reassured that 10% of Britons are clearly just calling Farage a c*nt the moment they hear his name:

One in ten Britons (10%) include at least one swearword or insult in their three-word description of Farage, while 7% describe him as evil or cruel, allusions to him being arrogant or dangerous are each made by 6%, and 5% refer to him as either an idiot or a clown.

Word cloud for Farage where the three biggest dots are Racist, Liar, and Insults. The absolute cowards at YouGov didn't publish a list of the actual insults though.

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 11/08/2026

I don't know man, I ... think we do ordinarily take pleasure in those things.

020

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 04/08/2026

A rare moment when I can chip in to say don't sleep on IKEA Ivar. Cheap, super solid if you fix to the wall, expandable. I moved all my records into it this year...bliss.

150

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 30/07/2026

Quite enjoyed being reminded of writing this piece today. In particular thinking of just how much writing time I put into composing this one paragraph:

Text that reads:

Here’s a challenge for you: read the following paragraph aloud.

Fork the potatoes and work the tomatoes? Hoe the rows now, then mow, and wait to weigh the hay? Plough the rough right through? With this cough, though? The very thought. No – you know that after school I’m scheduled to shear the ewes, prune the yews, and bear beers for the four bare beardless bears here, before tearing in tears to hear a reading in Reading about seeding and shedding. Fun for two, perhaps – none for one alone, on my own.

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 02/07/2026

Very exciting that thanks to the magic of the internet I can verify this memory from when I was a tender 18 years old. Turns out the beeb website still has a transcript of the precise moment:

240

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 18/06/2026

I'm very pleased Manchester is doing so well, and at the same time:

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 29/05/2026

I presume you've seen this @roberthutton.co.uk? Not that Lisa Nandy cares what you think, of course ... www.ft.com/content/dc47...

161

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 28/05/2026

Picture makes it look like Sting is nearing the final stages of his transformation.

110

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 22/04/2026

I've had a pretty good year so far, and done some exciting things, but sort of the best thing I've done was to build a fitted bookcase for the books that had been packed away since last March.

001

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 22/04/2026

Well, it's prompted me to get the collected down, and this... Good to revisit with more patience at last.

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 09/04/2026

So delighted to see our translation of Magali Le Huche and Pauline Pinson's Bum Fish named as kids' book of the week by @irishnews.com. Thanks fellas! Correction, though, this was not a solo effort: my wife and I translated it together, pouring all our shared love of cheese puns into it.

130

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 02/04/2026

The sort of prose that really makes you sit up and look for typos.

110

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 30/03/2026

Perhaps it shouldn't amaze me that we're still unpicking the mess of Nazi theft and extorsion, but it does. Beautiful Lesser Ury painting restituted to the heirs of Curt Goldschmidt by the Bayerische state museums today, 90 years after Goldschmidt was made bankrupt by Nazi laws ...

041

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 18/03/2026

I spent a good 20 minutes looking at this yesterday at TEFAF... glory.

120

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 11/03/2026

I feel like no one ever talks about Bazille, and I know next to nothing about him ... and yet every single time I see a Bazille painting I'm floored by it.

120

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 09/03/2026

And actually it turns out that the major issue I have is that I'm simply too tired and time poor to sit down and read Adorno more often. Because, wow, I just love Adorno. I find him so much effort and so much fun and god what a pleasure it is to make the effort and find the fun! 3/3

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 03/03/2026

Meanwhile, the study, finished as of a month ago, went from this, to this, to this. OK, we still have a packing blanket pinned up instead of a curtain, but we're getting there.

110

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 03/03/2026

As more elements of the house fall into place, we're now very nearly there on on the kitchen too. A year ago it looked like this. Now it looks like this. Still some finishing up to do, but we're getting there.

131

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 22/02/2026

The living room used to look like this...now it looks like this.

150

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 22/02/2026

We completed on our house one year ago this week...it took until 10pm last night to finally get the living room to the point where I could unpack my records. It's been a long year.

170

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 21/01/2026

I am very, very grateful to have been directed to The Book of My Enemy, Jeremy. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

120

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 14/01/2026

I suppose this also serves as the, ahem, small announcement that we're expecting our second bay this May. Can't wait! Looking forward to this guy having a sibling.

110

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 03/12/2025

tfw you want to check a word you've used really exists and you discover that it's listed as a job by the Welsh government.

101

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 28/11/2025

Just laughed out loud in the reading room. I love Victor Hugo:

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 28/11/2025

The nice thing about Badenoch is she's not just awful, she's also unconquerably stupid. Tax is the reason Jesus was born in a stable, you dolt! Roman state existed and had welfare systems: the cura Annonae and the alimenta, etc. And who in the UK electorate likes this weirdo stuff anyway?

040

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 27/11/2025

The thing about moka pots is yes, sure, OK, they are fiddly, messy, and basically lethal to use without wearing full body armour, but they do make absolutely shit tasting coffee.

210

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 08/11/2025

Post a non-religious image you think of as holy.

130

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 06/10/2025

Life has been so mad this last six months that I have records I bought in July that I still haven't listened to. At last, I am. My god this is good.

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 24/09/2025

Opened Berryman's Sonnets this morning for the first time in many a year. My boy.

120

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 15/08/2025

Today, and every day's, thoughtform: the intention to know.

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 12/08/2025

Looking at Nadia kaabi-Linke's work for a piece, and just completely entranced by this image from Tunisia during the Arab Spring. Phenomenal.

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 11/08/2025

Nope, I give up, I'm old, I don't understand anything any more.

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 06/08/2025

Extremely strong irrational desire to track down this album now and purchase it whatever the cost to me and my family.

010

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 30/07/2025

You can tell this is daft stuff by the proment mention that 'He's not in the Royal Academy'. Goldsworthy declined the offer in 1994. He's not in the RA because he didn't want to be. Also, he does have an OBE. He's Andy Goldsworthy OBE. With an OBE. So, you know, maybe not a watertight case.

Text stating that Andy Goldsworthy OBE who declined membership of the Royal Academy in 1994 isn't in the Royal Academy and doesn't have an OBE.

100

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 24/07/2025

When you can surgically attach a microphone to the back of an old man's head but you can't make your mind up about the name of your new political party...

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 24/07/2025

Camp has been arround since 1876! And delicious pseudo-coffee it is too.

030

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 09/07/2025

#NowPlaying funny little repackage of Rosemary Lane. Gorgeous.

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 18/06/2025

My impression at a distance is that many of the MAGA gang have had their minds so fried by Russian propaganda that Trump going to war with a Russian ally would cause unendurable cognitive dissonnance. There can only be one result.

Image of MAGA news guy's head exploding. Actually a still from Cronenberg's Scanners but whatever.

000

Tim Smith-Laing @timsmith-laing.com · 16/06/2025

#NowPlaying Bill Orcutt/Fake Estates, The Anxiety of Symmetry, freshly arrived from the States. Beautiful beautiful stuff.

020