In a side street church alone with this and this, and let’s just say Italy still freaks me out a bit.

The Duke of Wellington statue, complete with traffic cone, has become a rather iconic symbol of Glasgow. I ran a wee route this morning trying to find as many other horse statues as I could in the city. There ain't that many...

Had a work trip to Swansea Museum earlier. Waiting in the foyer I overheard a school kid say to their group "Let's go and see the devil!" I followed them *of course* down to the lower ground floor and found The Swansea Devil... >>> Hit Alt Text to Discover More <<<

I have a new installation as part of Offerings, at Six Foot in Glasgow, running from 31st March until 21st April. Opening night Tuesday 31st 7-9pm. corpus tenebras lux/sic : body map for vibrato is a multimedia installation exploring chronic illness, creative acts and connection, time, and archive

I listened to the audiobook of Upon A White Horse and it was excellent. Ross delivers a fascinating archeological travelog that is at times funny, poetic and profound. A compelling read and an inspiration to learn more about so many wondrous topics. #BookSky

St Andrew's in Lviv is one of the great churches of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the site of the shrine of St John of Dukla, built and beautified in thanksgiving for 17th-century victories over the Muscovites who are now trying to destroy it

*Always* the most terrifying face-in-a-building 😱 Chepstow medieval Town Gate on Tuesday night 👌 📷 My own.

A new instalment of INVENTORY is available now via the @backlisted.bsky.social Patreon. This week: If I Could Only Forget Their Names: Crosby, Stills and Nash. Big shout to my ‘heavy friend’ @heykidsshop.bsky.social for the little CSNY. www.patreon.com/backlisted

Hats off to Terry Cox

Congratulations to Lithuania's Laukiai Oak on winning European Tree of the Year! 🇱🇹🌳🥳 www.lrt.lt/naujienos/la...

Pictures that explain things ‘Understanding Maps’ 1966 Artist: Ronald Lampitt

Encouraging Aggie to frightful horticultural indiscretions.

NEW The US guided missile attack on a school in Minab in Iran looks like a war crime By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Do not pander. Do not dumb down. Trust your audience to be smarter than you. Trust them to be curious. Don’t erase your own voice for spurious bowing down to factors that bring nothing to the stories you need to tell. #Writing

Didn't get a chance to post this yesterday. My @heraldscotland column on political promises, kept and broken. www.heraldscotland.com/politics/vie...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rh... Nicholas Brendon RIP.

"Their songs resemble small, deconstructed sketches of songs, which at the same time are plainly the finished article." I really enjoyed this piece on Young Marble Giants and some other things.

Today is publication day for ‘Fairies: A History’ - so I’ve written a special free post over on ‘All Old Strange Things’ to celebrate 📚🧚 open.substack.com/pub/drfranci...

"The saudade following the fire is also a lament for a Glasgow that no longer exists; for the old Union Street records shops like Bruce's, Missing and Listen...for the days of dancing in Viva and Vamps; and for the A-listed Egyptian Halls" The always-terrific Audrey Gillan for the @lrb.co.uk.

I’m truly thrilled to say I will be chatting to @grindrod.bsky.social about his terrific new book Tales of the Suburbs on 2nd April at The Proud Place in Manchester. Tickets are available now. the-modernist.org/collections/...

The paperback of my historical crime novel, Love And Other Poisons, is out today!

We should be back around 11 o'clock, unless Mr Sugden is talking about Deep Purple again & misses the turn off, he did on the way here.

Fame & fortune seem just around the corner.

EVENTS! Tickets available for Tales of the Suburbs events in Crystal Palace (tonight), Bath (Saturday), Edinburgh and Glasgow (next week), Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham (the week after), plus Milton Keynes. More to follow! Please come along x www.johngrindrod.co.uk/events

Always so emotional seeing them play live. Still vividly recall them playing in a small yurt-like tent with ~40 people as part of Paisley Spree in Oct 2021 (the first gigs after the start of the Covid pandemic) and James Graham saying this was more people than he had seen in almost 2 years. 😢

Just saw two grebes doing that mirroring dance they do, as if they’re not New Romantic enough already

Outside my flat, I hear a voice say “Alan, you are being so fucking obstreperous right now.” A woman appears, walking backwards, holding a taut thrumming leash, straining hard against her. Then, seemingly minutes later Alan finally appears: the smallest, lowest, muscliest sausage dog in all creation

Lectures - dull. Food - good. City - beautiful. Bookshops - tempting. Sleep - insufficient. Dad - lonely.

Modelled on the Dollan Baths….

Am on Lauren Laverne’s 6 Music show today talking about Tales of the Suburbs. (In theory, sometimes these things don’t happen, do they?) it’s my favourite radio show so I’m very excited!

Can’t emphasise enough how great and important Calabash is to Glasgow. Do go when they open again, or just chuck some money down the stairs but support it. It’s brilliant. www.glasgowbell.co.uk/outsider-liv...

This is excellent reporting by The Bell. I don’t know how that small team does it. Must be exhausting writing so much and trying to keep the quality high. Hats off to them.

I kept seeing this flashing by at Montecatini in Terme on the train to Florence, so this morning, on a whim, I got off there only to find it was not, as I had assumed, one of the historic spas but a graveyard. Truly a city of the dead

🌺 ❤️ 💋

Morrissey is such a mad old ham. I love it. He’s like a Victorian- on those posts he does he always sounds like a consumptive aunt in 1896 writing back from travels ‘they presented me with an entirely indigestible mess of stewed aubergine and a wine so rough as to be vinegar….the train was vile’ etc

A run of the mill 1880s font made splendid by its setting in Old St Paul's Episcopal church, Edinburgh, for #FontsOnFriday

Cheer up your timeline, celebrate the weekend and offset any #FridayThe13th misfortune by 1) telling William Hourston's dog what a good boy he is 2) then asking him if he's a good boy 3) then booping his nose 4) then reminding him he's a good boy. #PhotographicArchives

A Royal Navy helicopter places the famous standing stones in Sighthill, March 1979 www.heraldscotland.com/news... @plasmatron.bsky.social @peteralanross.bsky.social 𝘐𝘔𝘈𝘎𝘌: 𝘕𝘦𝘸𝘴𝘲𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘵

I think what I like most about the David is the way it captures the absolute self-assurance of youth. He’s handsome, he is fit, he is perfectly proportioned and he doesn’t harbour a second’s doubt that he is going to vanquish Goliath.

FFS, not again. www.bbc.com/news/article...

St John the Baptist with the agnus dei, a 15th Century stone seated figure dredged from the Firth of Forth, presumably discarded or lost at the Reformation. Now in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The paperback of Upon A White Horse will be published on April 23. If any journalist interested in writing about the book would like an advance copy, please do let me know.

Yesterday we went to Salisbury Cathedral and a drive to Stonehenge last night. Visited a Hippy Camp close by for a laugh.

The Quercia delle Streghe (oak of the witches). It feels weird posting pics like this as the world burns but there must surely still be a place for beautiful things.

An absolute dream to write this for @thequietus.com about Pet Shop Boys, suburbia and the city