*walks into Cern "Bloody hell, can't believe you've got the Large Hadron Colider on? Couldn't you have managed with the small one!?". Clearly a Yorkshire Man.

This is an absolutely great list of small, low-cost daily ways to cheer yourself up 💞 www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

You might have missed: Ripley - plus other forgotten gems, and films to stream if you've got a MUBI subscription. Happy New Year from the Netflix Reviewer thenetflixreviewer.substack.com/p/you-might-...

Quite enjoyed Stranger Things in the end, though perhaps my favourite thing about it was, in the final episode, how much Nancy Wheeler looked like she could have been the sixth member of Ratt

In short: eat your bunny shaped chocolate and stop complaining

Can't get behind complaints about the shops being full of Easter stuff, so-called 'too early'. Every fool knows that Easter is the BEST of all the food-based holidays. At Easter, chocolate is available in a variety of different shapes, which make it taste better. No, I won't be explaining

I don't understand this thing people do on Storygraph and Goodreads where they rate each story from a short story collection individually, giving each story a rating out of five stars, or am I just now an old man shouting at clouds?

Heads-up for #crossword types (and the crossword-adjacent). I'll be relaunching this in 2026, so maybe start thinking ahead: these make fantastic birthday, anniversary or new-baby gifts. Feedback on my Christmas puzzles included "awesome", "fantastic" and (my favourite) "you're so clever".

Sean Paul - Get Busy www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPQ3...

Sometimes I wonder if I am the only person in the entire world who didn't like Breaking Bad, mainly for the flaws in its internal logic, and for the fact you categorically cannot develop sociopathy as an adult

People keep going on about Pluribus, how brilliant, Vince Gilligan some kind of genius, etc, but the thing is... I kind of thought Breaking Bad was... well... a bit shit

Stranger Things? Silly Things more like

and before you ask, the Arts Council don't give out grants to cover this type of activity - I've checked

How amazing life would be if you didn't have to do all of the boring admin and maintenance tasks involved with life, and could just give them to somebody else to do, so that I could concentrate my time on the really important stuff: eating crisps and staring blankly out of a window

Not for the first time, I'm desperately wishing I had Staff

Unless I'm very much mistaken, I'm pretty sure Tommy Robinson / Stephen Yaxley Lennon said he'd converted to Islam during a previous stretch? If he's not careful, he'll soon run out of religions to vexatiously convert to, none of which want him

Almost can't believe I'm saying this, but I am starting to think I might have bought "too many" Christmas snacks and cakes

PADDINGTON 2 LET'S GOOOOOO

If 2026 continues in a similar vein, you can rest assured that my output for the year will consist of a series of ever-lengthening, increasingly unrealistic, lists, possibly culminating in a master-list of all the lists I've produced

OK so my writing session this morning has mainly consisted of writing a completely unrealistic list of all the things I'm supposedly going to write in 2026

Also, I don't want to borrow more books from the library for fear of being halfway through something, and then having to return it before we leave

We're packing to move house in the New Year, and I packed away all of my books, and I now realise I will probably have run out of things to read by about 14.34 this afternoon

You won't catch me in another shop again until hopefully about January the 19th, and then only if I really must

Managed to secure some Christmas Cake but spectacularly failed to get any Crumbly Cheese to go with it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to the shops again now

Me, belatedly realising I've done a terrible job of promoting the idea of buying my BOOK, Maps of Imaginary Towns, as a Christmas gift:

Has anybody else on here read the Arts Council independent review? I have to say I'm a pretty big fan. Like the idea about scrapping Grantium and paying artists £30k a year www.gov.uk/government/p...

No joke: in my workplace (charity sector) there are people doing serious work directly combatting poverty, handing out warm clothes, food + fuel vouchers, etc, and most of the people doing this work are earning what will soon be below minimum wage

just lately it feels like between 90 and 95% of my job is reminding other people to do things, including the people senior to me

Only 8 days to go now, lads! we can do it!

I've had to bookmark this. It has me in hysterics.

Where to start with Taskmaster: All the Information is on the Task. My latest for The Netflix Reviewer thenetflixreviewer.substack.com/p/where-to-s...

Was looking around some stalls earlier and one of them was selling a type of Christmas Cake labelled as being "Yotam Ottolenghi's Christmas cake" and I couldn't help but wonder whether he knows they've got his cake, and wants it back

Genuinely, and this is not hyperbole, genuinely devastated that Christmas Cake is so expensive these days. Would have made one myself back in October had I realised. I bloody love Christmas Cake, it's my favourite of all the Christmas foods

Always find it annoying that the production of mashed potato is so labour-intensive. I REFUSE TO EAT THE DRIED SORT THAT COMES IN A BOX. I don't hate myself that much

My Grandmother was deaf as a post, and in a 'conversation' with her, you could never get a word in edgewise for her telling you dozens of grim stories about people you'd never met 'who'd died in the war' or 'in a bizarre tractor accident'. I don't think AI has got the chops to recreate any of that

Really sad news that the author Sophie Kinsella has died: she was the author of several absolutely cracking, pacey funny rom-coms including a few of my personal faves, I've Got Your Number, Remember Me? and The Domestic Goddess. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

Accidentally became really popular at work by bringing in some new coffee pods that everybody really likes

Participating in 'show me a photo from your phone that has your energy, but which isn't a selfie', so I can share this highly important photo with you all

Kept awake half the night by somebody's cat out yowling in the street, and this morning I was so befuddled by the lack of sleep that I took a completely empty bag out of the house: no diary, no notebook, no wallet, nothing

where can I get a set of old-fashioned drawers for index cards, the type you used to get in a library, before the advent of the online database? I'm starting to have a need of somewhere 'proper' to put the index cards that are increasingly becoming a part of my analogue writing 'system'

I jest, but the photo-to-text has saved me quite a bit of time this morning, even if it did interpret some of my writing as being in Cyrillic

Really need a photo-to-text app that can read my handwriting, because mine just invented a government department called "the Ministry of Mousing"

FIFA should expand their roster of prizes to include one for literature

ONLY 16 DAYS TO GO TIL THE SHORTEST DAY! THEN THE DAYS GET LONGER AGAIN! WE CAN DO IT, PALS!

IT'S CHRISTMAS FILM SEASON, BÉBÉ

Illustrating the postcolonial experience: 40 years of Peepal Tree Press. Shout out to this excellent Leeds-based publisher of Caribbean diaspora fiction, still going strong at 40! www.theguardian.com/news/2025/de...

This would make a good Christmas present for anyone in your life interested in literary analysis or creative writing! I’m really enjoying it 🎄📚🎅📝⛄️ @flyonthewallpress.bsky.social @bradleybooks.bsky.social @farhanashaikh.bsky.social

1.5 hours to do a 2.5 mile journey today across Leeds. Really starting to think the Mayor of West Yorkshire should reintroduce the Horse and Cart, as it would probably be quicker for most short journeys

Taking an evening off from working my way through all of the terrible Hallmark Universe Christmas Films on Netflix, to instead work my way through this instead www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

The news coming out of the Your Party conference are giving me flashbacks to the climate project I used to work on, where everybody refused to work with each other, very few people achieved anything of any note, and everybody went around saying it was everybody else's fault