Ciel rouge, bergère bouge OK, I just made that up. What a sky though.

FERRULE BRITANNIA 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 @goakl.bsky.social on manoeuvres heading to France ⚜️🇫🇷⚜️

@cyclestortford.bsky.social If a global capital can do it…

Wow! What a breakthrough moment for these women. #WRWC2025 #RWC2025 #RUGBY

When you lose the ferrule from your walking stick on the way to the airport and the nice people at the Prosecco bar find a solution for you….

I have read the “tax bombshell” about Starmer. Jeez. I’ve seen more aggressive tax planning by my 7 year old granddaughter and her child ISA.

Travel day. Dressed for Autumn. Boiling on the airport bus. 20 and sunny at the house in France. May have to open the pool up. #firstworldproblems

Dinner

Love watching the toad rise

Well done England.

I was in Twickenham last night with 15,000 trying to get back to London. It was the usual bottleneck at the station. But we’re used to it. 82,000 today. Many of them not been to a sold out game before. Hope someone has thought about the entertainment for the kids as they stand in the q for hours.

I’m sure all Surrey fans must be delighted with their second place. Courtesy of their excellent South London spin twins Lawrence (Essex) and Chahar (Rajasthan). I guess they don’t have that big a population to draw from for their academy. #cricket

I’m speechless.

My London Transport experiences are always a bit fraught. Tonight - going to Twickenham to see Quins v Bath - someone decided to jump under a tube at Vauxhall. Annoying. But then you think of the poor bastard who couldn’t take any more. So sad.

I don’t understand how Surrey get away with bringing in a ringer for every last game of the summer. But Somerset prepare a sporting pitch and get points deductions. I guess it helps to know people. #Cricket

“Without action to secure water resources, England faces a shortfall of 5bn litres a day for public water supplies by 2055” But let’s build massive AI buildings anyway. So some tech companies can make money.

Over the past month I’ve been asked for my ID at: Bank (opening a new account) Van hire New volunteer job Exiting and entering the country Flu jab New library card I shown passport, driving licence, bank statement, bus pass, NI and NHS number. Single ID can’t come quickly enough.

And here - like a scene that John Constable might have painted - is the lovely church at Good Easter.

I do love stumbling across treasures of the English countryside while out cycling. Great Waltham in Essex (just north of unlovely Chelmsford).

I suppose fluency in a foreign language does require you to understand the play on words too.

This is exactly like the way we Brits find a head of state. Except that all the candidates have to be the eldest child of the Windsor family (previously SaxeCoburgGotha). www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

It's weird - but now in Oslo, there's so many EVs that you notice the noise and the smell from individual ICE cars, and you realise how much we've been normalising it for ever. You can smell them half a street away. And inside parking lots are just *quiet*.

Youngest just secured a top job at a quantum computing outfit, so both kids are gainfully employed! Feel like Mrs Bennet in P&P when she marries off 2 of her 5 daughters in one day. "Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Ms Miller got rid of her two most deserving offspring" 💪🏻👍🏻

Person on a bicycle is killed by a person in a car. The #BBC wants you to know to the make and model of the car but absolutely not that there was a driver involved.

First Farage platformed notorious UK anti-vaxxer, Aseem Malhotra, who insinuated that Covid vaccines caused the Royal Family’s recent cancers. Now he’s openly trashing scientific method & evidence, pretending neither can be trusted & facts are a free for all. This is deeply dangerous populism.

Sadiq Khan's team on Trump's comments about London crime The homicide rate in the US is seven times that of London

Everyone is like this. Everyone at 25 looks like some celestial being, impossibly beautiful and alive. And only old people know this. If only we KNEW we were godlike at the time. Anyway, it was very moving to see an ordinary life glorified, as all lives are in death. Sunny afternoon here, love, Ian.

Good day for a quick visit to a church. The End. #Rapture

The cricketing world has lost a legend today. Thank you for the memories, Harold Dennis “Dickie” Bird MBE OBE. May you rest in peace. #WeAreSomerset

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

Another dangerous driver uses the exceptional hardship get-out because they have to do things that other people without cars have to do. And of course, this cannot be the first offence to be facing a ban. #TwoTeirLaw www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/2547951...

To those who celebrate (and frankly to anyone who needs it) Shanah Tovah. Happy New Year. May your life be filled with sweetness and joy. And chicken soup.

Why yes, that is another chicken soup (and yes, it DOES include the leftover chicken soup from last week, please don’t tell the rest of the household). Yes, I do feel like a peasant, just adding a few more veg and a bit more chicken to the pot.

No, no, no... christ, that's disappointing Keir. The correct response is "The people Mr Farage is targetting are our friends, colleagues, husbands, wives, that have enriched the UK by being here. Mr Farage's proposals are immoral, disgusting and illegal and we will oppose them on principle.

It’s really cold out there this morning! Wrap up warm. Forgot to take gloves on the bike…

And the crumble…

The dinner…

And plum (from the French garden) crumble…

Child back from university so I must remember how to cook for more that two.

Goodness, is that #Somerset’s Tom Banton getting a bat? Maybe he can play at Chelmsford on Wednesday. Not as though he’ll be too tired.

In shocking news, we learn that the Pope is a Catholic and bears don’t use indoor toilets.

Van empty. Sandwich made. In front of the telly. Sonny Boy bowling. That Stirling is a big boy isn’t he?

Just a couple more things…

England into a second major sporting final this year. Another group of fantastic players with many of them great role models for the LGBTQ+ community. Thank goodness the men have already put out the flags to celebrate.

I am looking forward to this. England v France. #WorldCup

Not for EU. This makes a bit more sense. “Wild British crab” ( though “caught in the N E Atlantic” is a bit problematic…) picked and packed in Hounslow. Wouldn’t want that roaming free in the EU.

Meanwhile. Is there a better reward for late lunch after doing the weekly Tesco run?

Tommy Robinson has just been deported from both Colombia and Panama. Still, I'm sure he understands why a country would want to secure its borders against fighting age foreign criminals.

Not for EU. It’s an (well half anyway) Epoisses. Bought in Tesco. Make it make sense oh wise ones.

I've read Night Watch the most out of Discworld books, and for good reason. (Small Gods takes second place)