* The links were chosen not just because I like them but because you’ll like them too and perhaps discover something new. The News and Funnies sections are mostly self-explanatory. But please seek out  Charlie Brooker on the Guardian website—he’s brilliant—and watch his Screenwipe clips on YouTube.  The inclusion of the website of the North Platte Telegraph, a local paper in Nebraska, probably needs explaining. I first read about the town in The Onion (link to article). Naturally, I Googled the place. It exists, and feeds an explicable fantasy I’ve had throughout my adult urban life, to pack up and make a new life for myself in a small town, were I would be as alone as a human could be.

Books includes sites about writers I admire, but only if the sites have useful and plentiful content. Coupland, James, Lessing and Colwin are writers I admire. The London Review of Books is a wonderful publication that doesn’t get enough attention. I despaired of finding a website that would give readers a head start on Virginia Woolf, so I chose one that provided an overview.

The Arts links cover some photographers and painters I admire. Derelict London is a magnificent site, radiating squalor, decrepitude, filth, the silence of ruins, all those good things. Thomas Heatherwick is one of the few modern architects I can stand. As a profession, they have brought such misery to our lives. But Heatherwick, I mean, look at his Blue Carpet park. Rosemarie Schulz is an eponymous store in Paris that sells indescribable things, objets, that combine flowers, foliage and cloth in a way that creates little emblems of pleasure. Her store is in the Madeleine and hard to find, but persevere. The Musée Cluny is my favourite Paris museum. Le Train Bleu is one of my favourite restaurants. Please visit and sustain this marvellous place. And Dufflet, pronounced Duff-lett, is a Toronto pastry chef. She’s an artist in cream, flour and sugar, like a Wayne Thiebaud painting brought to life. I favour her Toasted Almond Meringues. I would choose her Raspberry Vanilla Charlotte as my last meal, just that dessert alone.