Have you spotted any spring blossom yet? Here in London, the blush-pink cherry is just starting to come through and the magnolia buds, furry and pea green now, will soon hold waxy flowers. The seasons are changing and about time too.

It seems timely to present Dawn's beautiful photograph of Oh Comely issue 13, seen under a vase full of flowers, as our reader photo this week. Dawn is in her second year of studying graphic design at Bath School of Art.

To find more of her work and photography, including a fun project about breakfast, visit her blog dawncevans.tumblr.com.

If you have pictures of Oh Comely at home, we'd love to share them here! Send your snaps to [email protected].

Lotte Scott is a London-based artist concerned with tradition, memory and sense of place. Here we present an extract of her multimedia project, The Hill, a two-and-a-half year study of an Iron Age hill fort, called Cadbury Castle, in Somerset.

The series explores the history of the hill and Lotte’s own ties to the area. In the images below, she documents the blustery, exposed climate of the hill, various methods of gauging the area (using dowsing rods and pieces of string) and finds made by local treasure hunters. 

Photos: 1. Held dowsing rods. 2. Hill Pits. 3. String Walk. 4. Looking for bones II. 5. Hill Finds. www.lottescott.co.uk.

It’s with a tune in our hearts and mittens on our hands that we bring you today’s edition of Five Questions and a Song, the weekly column where we pester musicians with a quintette of questions and ask them to share one of their tracks for your listening pleasure.

Today we’re talking to American singer-songwriter Harper Simon. The New York native (and son of musician Paul Simon) left behind the alt-country flavour that characterized his self-titled debut album, focusing instead on electric guitar-driven rock for his sophomore record Division Street. The new album is out on the 1st of April, with another single, “'99” releaed later that month. Get a taste of the album below with “Bonnie Brae”.

Photo: Harper Simon by Charlie Gross

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Grew up in New York. Know something about film and music. A little about art. A little about fiction. Read the New York Times most every day. Meditate most days. Watch 60 Minutes. 

How does Division Street differ from your first album?

Louder. More emphasis on my electric guitar playing. More Stones/Velvets, less Americana. No co-writes. Mostly driven by my guitars and vocals and Pete Thomas from the Attractions on drums. 

What were your 'best picture' picks for this year's Oscars?

David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook probably. Or The Master. I really liked Beasts of the Southern Wild. I felt like I had never seen that world on film before. I also really enjoyed Moonrise Kingdom, Amour and Rust and Bone. If David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson all put out a film, it's a pretty good year at the movies for me. I actually thought Promised Land was really underrated. I thought Dave Eggers did a great job and I thought it had a lot of heart.  

If you weren't doing music, can you imagine what you would be doing instead? [asked by previous interviewees San Cisco]

I'd like to be on an ashram right now. I often don't feel like playing music or listening to it. I'd like to be writing something funny, or reading some novel I've been meaning to read or do some intense therapy to get me sorted out. Or go to a tennis camp maybe. Or travel around the middle east. 

What can you tell us about this song?

It's about people who aren't ready to be real. Young people running around, sleeping around, being floaty. Hurting people, getting hurt. Working through some difficult feelings and then getting out there again. It's about how sometimes you meet someone, you think you're having a golden moment and that everyone's on the same page. But you never know. 

www.harpersimon.com

In Michigan, USA sits the poignantly-titled Museum of Failed Products. Here, Pepsi AM Breakfast Cola, microwaveable scrambled eggs, self-heating soup cans and more fill its walls with items now discontinued.

For issue 15, we want to assemble our own museum of discontinued products. We're looking for food or drink packets you still have stowed away, that the shops no longer sell and everyone else has long forgotten.

A 1900s Heinz can that was sold at auction.

Perhaps you found something exotic in another country. Perhaps it was a variety of food that everyone else regarded as pretty ordinary, but you stockpiled it by the dozen on hearing of its approaching demise. Maybe, even now – months, years or decades on – you’d still walk over hot coals and sell a somewhat distant relative for one last packet.

If so, we want to hear about it. Take a phone pic and email [email protected] with the subject 'lost kitchen' and few lines telling the story.

Bon appétit!

Findus 'Beef' Lasagna: not yet discontinued.

Here at oh comely, we think things are better shared. Our one-man tech team has been working overtime, and now all new subscribers will getting a special code to give friends a £2 discount off a subscription. 

For one-year or two-year UK subscriptions, we'll even extend your subscription by an issue if a friend subscribes with the code. If two friends subscribe, we'll give you two extra issues! If 1000 subscribe, we promise to sort something out.

Subscriptions are £22 for a year, or £10 for six months via Direct Debit. For that, you get a nice surprise on your doorstep every other month.

How can I share the discount code with friends? If you subscribe now, you'll get the code in your confirmation email.

What if I already have a subscription? We'll be sending out discount codes to current subscribers in the next week or so.

Why do only one-year or two-year UK subscriptions get extended? We extend subscriptions by making the end date later, but Direct Debit subscriptions don't have an end date, so we can't do that. Plus, you got a cheaper subscription to start with, so no complaining! International copies cost too much to post, unfortunately.

I didn't think this was how Ponzi schemes worked. No, it isn't. This is.

"I haven't tie-dyed anything since primary school," someone excitedly admits behind me. Over the weekend, Hannah Bailey at creative PR agency Neon Stash hosted the first tie-dye high five workshop at Boxpark, Shoreditch. It's an event determined to reunite people with their elastic bands and dye bottles.

Each table was stocked up with a flexible colour palette, supplied by Dylon, instructions for an array of dyeing techniques and plenty of enthusiasm. People were dyeing everything from jeans to spotless white Converses. By the end of the evening, even the most skeptical dyers were eager to unwrap their creations - each being warned to be patient and wait 24 hours before revealing their efforts. 

So, are we converted to tie-dye? I think so! Here are some images from the night:

Cloud Atlas doesn’t really work. There can be simple reasons why some films find themselves in this situation: the lead actor was miscast, or the script needed a few more drafts, or the budget was too low, or the director didn't have a strong enough vision.

It's easy to observe a film’s errors and be aware of the superior work hiding beneath its skin. Beyond exploring the wrong turns made during Cloud Atlas’ production, however, is a pertinent question: could the film have ever worked? Is it a valiant attempt at translating an unfilmable book to the screen or a botched adaptation of superlative source material – a compelling artistic exercise or a missed opportunity?

Adapted and filmed by the Wachowksi siblings (The Matrix trilogy) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), and based on the novel by David Mitchell (not that one), Cloud Atlas follows six separate stories set in different eras, loosely connected by the idea that all six protagonists are the same soul. Eschewing the book’s nesting structure where each protagonist found the previous story, the film cuts between them, highlighting the thematic and narrative similarities in each story, while its cast play different roles.

The decision to cut between stories is understandable and often well-handled, but means that every story has to be connected. In trying to draw out the book's underlying theme – the endless cycle of subjugation of one's fellow man – each story is winnowed down so it has vaguely the same plot. The result is that a generally comic story like the contemporary one featuring Jim Broadbent's fastidious publisher seems woefully out of place when sitting alongside stories where human lives and whole societies are at stake.

Unsurprisingly, even with a length of nearly three hours, Cloud Atlas suffers from too little time spent in each world and with each main character. Having six whole narratives to plough through doesn't help, but a greater issue is the time devoted to lengthy voiceovers that underline the film's themes over and over again whilst the characters are shown treading water in their narratives, stuck in repose, thought or danger.

The separate plots grind to a standstill on several occasions to do this, and then have to race to catch up. In the 2144 story, it's barely established how genetically-enhanced fabricant Sonmi-451 is subjugated before she becomes drafted to join the resistance, whilst Halle Berry's 70s journalist solves her case with virtually no effort: new developments literally come to her apartment and knock on her door.

The struggle to define so many different worlds means all of them feel smaller and more generic than they should. Despite its $102 million budget, the film feels reined in. Considering that its directors are so talented at conveying movement and action, it's disappointing how saggy and slow Cloud Atlas feels, while there is also no effort to differentiate the stories visually.

Where much of the pleasure in Mitchell's book came from his experimenting with different genres and writing styles, there is no corresponding shift in the translation to film. As a consequence of the stories being mixed in together, they share their look, theme, plot and actors. The result is oddly reminiscent of the Wachowkis' Matrix Trilogy: good guys destroying an evil Hugo Weaving over and over again, in order to free the oppressed.

The reasoning behind having the actors play multiple roles is fairly clear, suggesting through repetition that anyone is capable of contributing to subjugation, and that man is caught in a near-eternal struggle to break free of it. However, the technique is ubiquitous enough to be incredibly distracting, especially in dramatic scenes or during the film's first half when the six protagonists are being established. There are a few fun cameos, particularly Tom Hanks as a thuggish writer and Hugh Grant’s many ne'er-do-wells, but it's impossible to not play a game of Guess The Actor. For the most part it adds to the film’s unintended goofiness, making Cloud Atlas hard to take seriously even as it argues nuanced, interesting points.

There probably was a better film to be made from the source material, but even that one would have likely been a sprawling mess. The Wachowskis and Tykwer demonstrate real intelligence in the choices they've made and a good understanding of what is special about the novel, while their ambition and willingness to engage with big themes is laudable. For Cloud Atlas to have even been made at all is a major accomplishment; sadly, that doesn’t make the actual film any more satisfying.

On late winter days like these, a magazine can be very good company indeed; read whilst curled up on the sofa, or delved into on your lunch break. And today's reader photo captures just that pleasure: reading as a means of escaping into another world.

It comes from Lesley Bruce who photographed issue 12 being read by a friend. "The magazine," Lesley says, "was on our kitchen table when it was snapped up by Jonathan who was passing by." 

You can find more of Lesley's photography on Flickr. Expect portraits of family and friends, domestic landscapes and still life.

What's your copy of Oh Comely up to? We'd love to share your pictures of the magazine here, and you can send them to [email protected].