Finished!

It’s so difficult we’ve had to resort to the scholarship to work out where the black pieces go.

The last of our aubergines.

Here’s an apothogem for Thursday night: you can’t say you know a painting well until you’ve done the jigsaw of it. @lordbonkers.bsky.social

A Brixton pavement short story for this Sunday afternoon.

Art history in jigsaw puzzles: which other great painting features an aerialiste?

The quintessence of fu parking.

Herne Hill wall as ECM album cover.

Do you remember in Ye Olden Days when the staff at Sainsbury’s would take you to the shelf you were looking for? Now all you get is a derisory flick of the wrist in the direction of North London.

I have just hard someone on Radio 6 refer to Notting Hill Carnival goers as ‘Carni. heads’ and now I’m going to have to lie in a darkened room to recover.

I was telling one of the park keepers about the opera concert yesterday on the lawn in front of Brockwell Park. “There wasn’t much litter,” he remarked approvingly, “ and it was posh litter. Hummus, champagne bottles…”.

The Brixton Chamber Orcestra and Pegasus Opera performing extracts from operas - here Porgy and Bess. Q

A completely wonderful figure from Burra’s Landscape, Cornwall, with Figures and Tin Mine (1975)

The crowd at a bullfight in Spain - detail from Edward Burra’s Bullfight (1933).

Two second Dickens.

Accidental action painting, by the bins at the back of the Sainsbury’s Local on Brixton Hill.

It’s unusual to see such a massive dead building in Central London (it forms the west end of Red Lion Sq)

The dictation facility that comes with Microsoft Word is the gift that keeps on giving. It has just misinterpreted The Marquis de Sade as the Marquis de Sod.

This is an extraordinarily depressing read. Alan Ross and John Minton visited Corsica in 1947 with the detritus of WW2 littering the island & the Corsicans exhausted after Occupation and then the fight to free themselves. Ross’s writing is Sebald’s melancholy turned up to 11.

@maxtb.com Are you related to my first ever boss, Tim Tatton-Brown?

My Mum, a WREN in WWII, performed in a revue at The Whitehall Theatre. Intended to be bright and breezy and to take peoples’ minds off the nightly bombing, unfortunately its title ‘Ladies Out of Uniform’, attracted quite the wrong crowd. @lordbonkers.bsky.social

What’s the name of this please.

The Duddo Stones, Northumberland.

Padded pew backs in the chapel at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland.

Ghosts of the 1970s at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland.

The wild cattle of Chillingham.

Wooler warning.

St. Anne’s, Ancroft, Northumbria.

The washing peg bird. @ancientnmodern.bsky.social

This, from the excellent The Lost Folk by @lallymacbeth.bsky.social is one of the saddest sentences I’ve read in a book this year ‘In the 1950s, disaster struck, and some of the labels(at the Haslemere Educational Museum)next to the pottery exhibits were swopped around by children on a school visit’

First of our sweetcorn. Probably picked a bit too soon, but fierce sense of accomplishment nevertheless 💪. @scribblerrob.bsky.social @southlondongirl.bsky.social

What’s your sign?

The Surrealists’ favourite bridge.

Wystan lives on! My sister @sallymuir.bsky.social ‘s lovely painting of him has been turned into a fridge magnet for sale in the Royal Academy shop @tds153.bsky.social @stutheeditor.bsky.social @regretteruane.bsky.social @lordbonkers.bsky.social @ancientnmodern.bsky.social @jamesbarr.bsky.social

It’s not going to win a beauty competition any day soon but still, I bet it tastes good.

I am a subordinate in a police station. Superiors bark, “Get me the files.” Never please. @adamcsharp.bsky.social @dirtysexyhistory.bsky.social

I am offering Mrs Muir a commentary on the match based on memories of captaining my school third eleven in 1964. #UnreliableNarrator

No b*****d insect is going to decimate my chard as they did the cavallo nero. #NoMoreMrNice

Bumper crop of pink fir apple potatoes this year. All these from just one plant.

As you can see, this mad for it sweetcorn has dyed its hair pink.

It’s a crying shame Michael Portillo hasn’t featured the Herne Hill Gates to Brockwell Lido excursion on Great British Train Journeys.

Me as a megalith in Trafalgar Sq. #TheTriumphofArt

@earlymodernjohn.bsky.social What a great new job. As an undergraduate at UCL I studied the the Italian Renaissance as an optional course at the Warburg which was taught by Gombrich and Baxendall (!). Later on I produced a series on the R. for BBC2 and found the subject had been totally revised.

The topical joins the perennial.

Touching Brixton tribute to Sam The Wheels, Super-8 filmmaker and bicycle repairer.

Where are the other 21 varieties?

Only the swishest tote bags in Brixton.

Another Buckinghamshire calamity. The memorial in All Saints, Marlow to the MP who died when his coach turned over on Winter Hill (see panel below).

Sir Isaac Pocock was ‘called from this world to a better state’ while messing about in a boat on the Thames near his home in Cookham.

Stanley Spencer’s childhood home.