Late contender for headline (and stand) of the year… so nice to read furniture that isn’t SEOed to death (unless search engines are now tuned to partner and bishop?)

No running water? No problem. I’ve prepped for this www.thetimes.com/article/c796...

Reading for pleasure is essential for health and joy, but Britain is facing a reading crisis. I am supporting the Sunday Times Get Britain Reading campaign. Join me and pledge to spend at least 10 minutes a day reading for the next six weeks… link.thetimes.co.uk/join/74t/sig...

Ten years after building a 3,000-piece Lego Death Star with my kids (9, 7 and 2), I did it again. The kids were older, I was older… the Death Star was much, much bigger… The galactic task of building a 9,000-piece Lego Death Star www.thetimes.com/article/95eb...

Beautiful, upsetting, maddening, heartwarming interview What happened when @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social met her heroine Kathy Burke www.thetimes.com/article/89f8...

The ultimate example of nominative determinism... surgeon Neil Hopper jailed after amputation of his own legs www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When I was nine, I devised a plan to meet Luke Skywalker… it was simple… I would become a journalist and then interview him… didn’t expect it to take 40 years but still…

How many of these do you think we have in our small holiday cottage bedroom? One? Two? …

Friendly annual reminder to all A-level/GCSE students collecting exam results - if a photographer asks you to hold a piece of paper and jump in the air with delight, just say no.

Bags, blenders, antique clocks — if you name it, this army of volunteers in Tunbridge Wells can probably sort it with a smile and a story

Favourite story of the year… meeting the 81 - 81! - volunteers and seeing their combined decades of expertise put to work at the Tunbridge Wells repair cafe… My uplifting day at the repair café that fixes anything for free www.thetimes.com/article/d9f4...

Yes

Goodness me, how depressing: The US government is spending $160,000 to burn nearly $10m of contraceptives rather than sell them to the UN to ship to poor nations, according to sources.

An ode to a dog who had a stroke… I used to think it was a waste of money keeping an old dog alive www.thetimes.com/article/6dab...

Excited about National Caviar Day on the 18th. Only 11 more sleeps

Anyone else getting a lot of "press releases" from "relaytheupdate.com", "signalthenews.com" or similar? Emails from alleged humans eg Jasmine, Sienna, Adriana, Iris, Lucille etc. Replies get bounced back. Repping companies such as Number 1 Plates, Ski Vertigo, Plumb World. Is this death by AI PR?

Forecast in the UK is scorching for the next week. If you can, please put out some water sources. One for bees/butterflies* and one for bigger critters. *Shallow bowl with stones is ideal for insects, so they can drink without drowning. If you can manage a bird-height one as well, brilliant.

Very happy to bird bore with you @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social any time… I can play you our top 10 Merlins. Also, we have a tame baby magpie this year. Magpies are ruthless killers but this one is very cute. Ps lovely column

Tried watching Gladiator 2 last night but zzzzzz… is it just Gladiator but with fancier / worse fx? Is it just Game of Thrones with a fancier / worse story? Should I try again?

The legend that is JMW Turner was born 250 years ago, tomorrow, and a host of exhibitions are celebrating his legacy this year. If you want to spend the summer retracing the artist's footsteps throughout the UK @mattrudd.bsky.social tells you how in The Times: www.thetimes.com/article/e01c...

“It’s for the napkins at the truffle brunch on day three. Before the spa treatments at the palazzo and after the blessing from the Dalai Lama on the superyacht.” @mattrudd.bsky.social

Child A is 16,000th in the queue for a driving test after logging into the DVLA at 6.00.02am one year after the transport minister said it was “unacceptable” that robot scalpers were snapping all the tests released each week. Should this be harder than Oasis tickets? Ridiculous

A great piece by my colleague of 20+ years… Flying rats, gruelling shifts — why do we treat binmen like rubbish? www.thetimes.com/article/75ff...

Shiny apples. Get your shiny apples ‘ere.

My long read for the day (which you can read for free, you lucky people)… Five years of the WFH experiment: is it working? www.thetimes.com/article/4c3f...

Scotland is being amazing. #pundit

I cannot WAIT to read this.

This week’s column, inspired by all the miserable Desert Island Discs origin stories… My parenting plan for raising successful kids? Neglect them www.thetimes.com/article/dc57...

Books and shows that feel different now the US is in on Russia’s side? I’ll start: the Agency, most Harrison Ford films, anything with “has fallen” in the title, everything Le Carre wrote, quite a lot of what Nevil Shute wrote and all the Mission Impossibles. Oh and the Top Guns… blimey

And with the addition of one letter, a genius sub editor earns his salary…

Leaving Canada now… but a long black espresso coffee will forever be a Canadiano!

Thank goodness humanity is at a point where it can unite to overcome an existential threat… I mean, imagine if this had happened in the 1930s

Hilarious, damn it... has ruined Georgian romantic fiction for me forever so not a huge loss

Journalism 101: never pull the face the photographer suggests right at the end of the shoot (“just for fun, they’ll never use it”)

I’m Gen X, my son’s Gen Z. Is our relationship with alcohol worlds apart? www.thetimes.com/article/e9e9...

How to have the confidence of JD Vance? Is it training or nature or some kind of traumatic but ultimately beneficial in very specific circumstances brain injury?

🤯

Millions follow an Instagram account about sticks — er, why? It started with two friends reviewing bits of wood they found on hikes, but now ‘stick nation’ is a global sensation. Time to investigate… ✍️ @mattrudd.bsky.social

What a wholesome and stress free time I had last week… chatting with the creators of Stick Nation. Recommend! www.thetimes.com/article/3590...

Southport families: We’re looking for light in the darkness www.thetimes.com/article/8f5e...

The badger looking at badger graffiti has won the Natural History Museum's Wildlife Photographer of the Year award but this is my favourite by Michel d'Oultremont. A stoat maintaining a low profile in Belgium. Amazing.

Nope

So... a question about JMW Turner: it has been suggested that the reason he used such extraordinary colours in his paintings (therefore ushering in modernity) is because he was colour-blind (they found some glasses which suggested as much)... but...

Have just bought some Canadian maple syrup. Later, I might buy some Canadian crude oil and some Canadian helicopter parts and some Canadian sulfate woodpulp. Or maybe some Aviation Gin because I’ve got nowhere to store sulfate woodpulp.

My plan for a new Highway Code — for pedestrians (with fines and cattle prods for the dawdlers) www.thetimes.com/article/2aaa...

I very much recommend Mark Steel’s Desert Island Discs and from there, go back to Hugh Laurie’s one. Both suffered from maternal rejection, one more directly than the other. Fascinating how creativity came from that rejection. Makes me think it might be a good idea to be awful to my kids…

Glad to see more governments moving ever closer to legalising assisted dying - allowing people suffering in immense pain choice and dignity.

We’re only three weeks into 2025. Already feels like it’s going to be a long one.

Looking forward to this drama but hard to see how theyll beat the original. The sheer balls of Walden. I was 14 when this aired and I still remember it www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu7k...

Amazing how much of that speech was factually incorrect. I wonder if this new era of American isolationism will be as consequential as it was the last two times. Hopefully not