Brilliantly clever batting from England at Lord's today, but goodness me that India pace attack looks tame without Jasprit Bumrah.

Every now and then I dig out this video and remind myself of how mental this performance is. Late 80's Metallica were absolute animals. youtu.be/qjAhgd9K-8o?...

Timeline cleanser 🥺 youtube.com/shorts/mnmxv...

Reasonably sure I've just heard an oystercatcher calling in flight over our house in West Oxon just now. 'Autumn' migration has begun! Not a bad record for the village.

Another gripping Finals Day in the T20 Blast. Makes you think, if only the ECB had pumped more money into this competition rather than The Hundred...

I learn from World Cup historian @jonawils.bsky.social that the first third place playoff was Germany vs Austria (both playing in white for maximum confusion), and Mussolini's Italy was hosting, so I'm just going to add the playoff to the long list of fascism's bad ideas (near the bottom though)

Andy pls, can we not. BBC News - Burnham to announce plans for new North Sea oil and gas drilling www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

England's (and specifically Tuchel's) World Cup was a classic case of "two things can be true":

Important workplace gossip update: Colleague with notoriously shoddy tea-making abilities has just received constructive criticism from another colleague. Criticism has not been received well. Repeat, not well. More news on this matter as we have it.

Had to watch the football with the sound off last night as we were in a hotel room with our sleeping 7 month old, so mercifully avoided Sam Matterface's rambling nonsense.

This Arthur Fery story is unbelievable. One of those dream slam runs where his confidence is so high he can't miss a shot. Such aggressive tennis too.

Oh no

“After it ended, the Belgian team’s social media account had a message to the U.S. on Twitter: “Overturn this.” Perfect. #WellPlayed #Belgium

Spain's away kit is an absolute thing of beauty by the way. #TheFootball

Watched the replay of the England game this morning before work. Just a fantastic game of football and an amazing performance under the circumstances. Despite Shearer's complaints I thought the referee did a good job of a tricky game. Gordon, Bellingham, Pickford and both CBs all excellent.

Unbelievable. In a game he played zero minutes in, Jordan Henderson got himself a yellow card and then needed to be stretchered off after injuring himself falling over the advertising board while singing #Wonderwall #MexEng *Just after the 55 second mark

Football? What football? Come on England. #WWC2026

Grigor Dimitrov has played other backwards-cap wearing players for two rounds in a row, and it's starting to mess with my head. #Wimbledon

This is an absolute abomination. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba...

An excellent team day out at the White Horse in Uffington yesterday, enjoying the beautiful calcareous grassland. Reassuringly saw an impressive abundance of butterflies on the wing. Marbled white in particular seem to be having a good year.

This sounds like a positive thing.

Amazing win for England Women in the T20. Aussies easily favourites in the final, but they have a chance if they play like they have throughout the tournament.

If people want to keep farming livestock in climate change England, they're going to need to factor in more trees, shrubs and wood pasture. It's amazing how many upland and lowland grazing pastures have virtually no shade at all.

Sir, Sam Matterface just said, ‘Houston we don’t have a problem.’

My tepid music take of the day is that The Magic Whip was an underrated album in Blur's discography.

Great to see England women finish their very impressive run in the T20 World Cup group stage last night. A glorious evening at The Oval.

You know the air temperatures are unusually high when butterflies are out on the wing at 6:30am! A marbled white, in some lowland calcareous grassland in the Buckinghamshire Chilterns this morning.

Wonder if Stokesey's wishing he resigned when he had the chance. #ENGNZ

Mind-boggling heat for France in June.

I don't know if this is controversial (can't work out which Labour ministers people actually like any more), but I quite like Bridget Phillipson and I hope she keeps her cabinet position if and when Burnham gets in.

Great tits in the garden still heroically battling the heat to feed second brood nestlings. Feeding rates unsurprisingly seem to drop in the afternoon when the heat is worse. Must be taking a huge toll on the parents.

It was inevitable, wasn't it🙄 Of course the Telegraph would run with something like this👇 So let's remove some of the rose-tinted spectacles and also look at some of that data comparing 1976 with modern heat waves Because the 1976 nostalgia porn is wearing a bit thin at this stage 🧵1/23

Technically, they’re Remains now.

Just such a joy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsCd...

Man, some people are dealt a shit hand. Imagine going through that. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We're experiencing another record breaking heatwave, and we're sending helicopters to burn some fossil fuels filming a train from above for absolutely no reason. Make it make sense.

A) Do I think Burnham has the characteristics to be a slightly more capable PM than Starmer? Maybe, yes. B) Will the right wing press prey on him immediately, undermining any vague possibility of success, making Question A redundant anyway? Also yes.

Met Office forecast looking even more grim than the BBC, with possible highs of 39C for Weds and Thurs in our part of Oxfordshire. I'm sick of the few idiots on here that still play this down as 'climate fear'. It's not normal.

Any ideas on the culprit here (sorry, bit grim!). The bottom half of a frog, discarded on a mown path through a mini meadow in our garden. Second time in a week I've found this- first time it was just the legs 😬. The context maybe indicates a mammal following the mown path?

Rooney's still got a long way to go as a pundit, but I've been impressed by how much more comfortable he's become in the role. Speaks with confidence and looks in good shape too.

The Gestapo marched hundreds of thousands of innocent people to their deaths. I've ended private schools' tax breaks to invest in state schools. No responsible leader makes vile comparisons like this. Kemi Badenoch is not fit to be Prime Minister.

Marcelo Bielsa looking like he's about to drop a critically acclaimed experimental ambient house record

There are nest cams, and nest cams... www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8KT...

That's a brilliant win from Boulter.

One day into my sad, futile, one man World Cup boycott. Thanks Gianni and Donald for turning what used to be a real joy every four years into a nasty, grubby, shitshow. observer.co.uk/news/sport/a...

Nice.

no other way to say it, this thing in the uk where every single time a non-white person is in the news being accused of a crime we have full on race riots is very very bad

Condemning riots isn't enough. We need policy action, including an immediate appraisal of X as a vehicle for coordinating far-right disorder. And we need political leadership, to challenge white nationalism as an idea, not to validate it daily and then complain when it turns violent.

Back from an excellent long weekend in the New Forest. Birding highlight was probably a handful of flyover hawfinch, but also lovely to see crossbill, woodlark, tree pipit, redstart, spotted flycatcher, and lots of marsh tit family groups. Nuthatch photographed here.

This headline is a travesty. It's not a protest and it's got nothing to do with Henry Nowak. It's a racist riot. Call it that.