Typical isn't it, it's not International Potato Day until May, but the shops are already full of potatoes

The splendid website London Pavement Geology (www.londonpavementgeology.co.uk) has been extended across the UK and tells you where to find treasures hidden in plain sight. Here are some London fossils from the LSE and Somerset House.

Today's pots.

Last night's Moon.

Tiled mural depicting the penicillin molecule, under the Westway near St Mary's Hospital where Fleming made his discovery.

Alfred Buckham, Edinburgh 1920

Pots of the day

Happy Solstice everyone

Happy Beethoven's Birthday everyone

This desert is so long, it can take a lifetime to go from one end to the other, and a childhood to cross it at its narrowest point. - Ibn Khaldun

Owl of the day: from Bosch's The Wayfarer

And today, thinking about what my life has been, I feel like some sort of animal that’s being carried in a basket under a curved arm between two suburban train stations . . . these baskets usually have two lids, like half ovals, that lift up at one end or the other should the animal squirm . . .

Sand of the Day: Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California. Stovepipe Wells sand is brutal, cyclopean. I can barely fit it into my lens.

We enter it. We come. Our bodies cannot scale heaven except in a fume of burnt petrol. As lords that are expected. Yet there is a silent joy in our arrival. Years and years. Long arpeggios of chafing wires. The concentration of one's body in entering a loop. - T.E. Lawrence

Sand of the Day: Thames foreshore nr. Marigold Alley, London. Lots of lovely quartz with a rich mix of other stones.

Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? - 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 Thomas Browne, 𝘜𝘳𝘯𝘦 𝘉𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭

Epstein's work is no better than pornography. - Walter Sickert

When Babylon has fallen, what then? What shards and fragments shall we rescue from its ruins, and what new temples shall we make from them? When evil has evaporated, what then shall we have to fight against? The world may seem an endless afternoon . . . - Fernando Pessoa

"Old Cader [Idris] is a grand fellow, and shows himself off perfectly with every changing light." - Darwin

Cerrig Arthur, above the Mawddach Valley, Gwynedd. Diffwys in the background.

On the night platform

Good morning, Buddha

The iron gatepost is the last remaining relic of the Pyrgo estate, Havering, Essex, where Princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor spent a large part of their childhoods, an easy day's ride from London.

Spending the day defragging my hard drive. Looking forward to those fast fast read speeds tomorrow.

If you didn't fall in love with Diane Keaton the first time you saw the Uncle George story scene, your heart must've been made of stone . . . DK 1946 - 2025

Kashmir, 1980s

Seated goddess with a child, gold, Hittite Empire, Central Anatolia c. 14th–13th century BCE

Three rocks from the Chalbi Desert, Kenya

Lalibela, Ethiopia

Feed your head: listen to Spacemen 3's sensational 44-minute "Dreamweapon" while reading Will Carruthers' hilarious account of the creation of the piece: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_qA... www.theguardian.com/music/2016/s...

Planting Horned Poppies in my inland suburban garden, very optimistically #jarman #thegarden #prospect

Here's a piece I wrote about a medieval church font in Dorset: mbalax.substack.com/p/wild-bruti...

Last night's Moon.

Carnival characters

Within the chaptere-house of the Abbey at West Minstere, a grate nobel fysshe, al goldene hewed

When the head and the hand are separate, it is the head that suffers. - Richard Sennett

Happy Napoleon's Birthday everybody! Let's celebrate one of history's most powerfully ambiguous characters with this fragment of Hugo: Et chaque homme porte dedans son coeur Son propre, son privé Empéreur . . .

London Gliding School, Dunstable 1935 Christopher Nicholson Image from RIBApix

Stoat dance: lots of theories on this one but none proven. Brer Stoat plays his cards close to his chest.

"A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail." - Oscar Wilde, The Soul Of Man Under Socialism

Sidney Nolan, Landscape - Miner/Yellow Helmet, 1973 #artbots #tate https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1117498

It is party time among the cormorants of Aran, and you're invited, if you happen to be a cormorant

Shelagh, take a bow. (Shelagh Delaney in Salford, 7th August 1961, photo by Arnold Newman).

In the Burren, a fantastical limestone landscape in County Clare, with fossils of corals and crinoids underfoot, and orchids abounding.

Have been wanting to swim at the Forty Foot Hole in Sandycove for many years, and finally made it today, huzza

Send us, bright one, light one . . . quickening and wombfruit The National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin. Thought about the river of babies that pours out of here and reached for my non-existent sharpie to scribble on the panes of the door: Here Comes Everybody

How can we suppose that there is anything supernatural in us when we look back through history with such satisfaction at the discovery of gunpowder to blow men to pieces. Each fresh engine of destruction hailed with applause. - Richard Jefferies