While in Oxford this morning, I did notice English flags high on lampposts & wondered how the faux patriot arseholes managed to fix them SO high, & now I know. They hired a cherry-picker. 1/2🧵 The dark side of Raise the Colours via @oxfordclarion.bsky.social share.google/VKmL0bXcoMFY...

Visiting the Weston Library, Oxford earlier today. Mounted the steps, strode purposely to the Broad Street entrance, & couldn't resist commanding "Doors!". 🤣

Good morning. Trump vs Pope? Wrestling gets my vote.

I lost tonight, & therefore lost this year's University Challenge on the sofa competition. Tight, but second. If I manage to win the final next week I will finish one game from drawing the series. I am the Arsenal of sofa quizzing.

Today's most boring post: I'm waiting for my dough to rise. The kitchen is cooler than anticipated. (No proving draw for me, Hollywood!)

Crack of dawn.

The tide is turning. >>>BBC News - www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c2... Hungary election: Viktor Orbán concedes with opposition on course for landslide election win - follow live - BBC News

JD Vance went to Hungary to help the fascist there but instead lost him the election. Everything he touches dies LOL

Reform UK's Richard Tice. Is he a tax evader now, as well as a proven tax avoider? No way will Farage sack one of his party's many sources of questionable funding. >>BBC News - Tice £91,000 tax row is 'minor administrative error', party claims www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

They're back! >>BBC News - Balamory is back - Miss Hoolie and PC Plum lift the lid on what to expect www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My 7th read of 2026 was 'Farewell, My Lovely', Raymond Chandler (publ.1940). Philip Marlowe, working on a humdrum case going nowhere, stumbles into something far more interesting: a man-mountain, a missing person, a stolen necklace, blackmail, gambling, & City Hall corruption. 🧵1/2 Booksky 📚💙

6th read of 2026, 'A Voice in the Night' (DI Ryan Wilkins #4), Simon Mason, publ. 2025. Most satisfying so far. I'm still unconvinced Ryan would get anywhere near a cop shop other than a cell, but I'm happy to go along for the enjoyable ride - it's fiction, after all. And on... 🧵 1/2 Booksky 📚💙

Islamabad Talks latest: US Vice-President JD Vance leaves the Trump-Iran war negotiations in the presidential hearse.

Good morning.

I have a 'Joe 90 brain': one week I'm resident expert on such-and-such & the next week I'm expert in some other jam, & completely forgot everything 'learnt' about such-and-such. Will this help? I doubt it. I'll just end up reading a bunch of neuroscience.🤣 www.brainhealthdecoded.com/p/how-to-rem...

Question for you… 700+ killed by Israel in Gaza during “ceasefire” 250+ killed by Israel in Lebanon during “ceasefire” Would any other country enjoy the “ceasefire” label while massacring this many people? …we all know the answer by now.

Pope Leo lashed out against warmongers while calling on billions of people around the globe to embrace peace and "believe once again in love, moderation and good politics". u.afp.com/SE5B

Humanist and author Kurt Vonnegut died #OnThisDay 2007. So it goes. Here's Kurt on the humanist approach to life, as featured in #TheLittleBookofHumanism ❤️

NASA failed to predict the real splashdown risk.

My biometrics don't unlock my phone because I've been doing so much gardening this last week.

Good morning. 🎶Why don't you get back into bed? Why don't you get back into bed? Why don't you get back into bed?🎵

Today I ... 1. Shared a few minutes chatting with one of Stratford-upon-Avon's homeless sitting on a bench in the Bancroft Gardens, all he owns packed in three bags for life. 2. Helped a mother & baby buggy negotiate the steps of Lucy's Mill Bridge. Only fair I'm allowed a little sin this weekend.

John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl, publ. 1983. Beirut, Lebanon. Booksky 📚💙

The river is quiet at this time of the day. Stratford-upon-Avon. (Almost live)

Good morning. Ever the optimist, today I am having the car air-con purged, cleaned & recharged. Boring post, I know. But life is long periods of mundane punctuated by moments of sheer bliss.

More tulips. 'Little princess'.

Lawn mowed, and now it's raining. It's all about timing (and keeping an eye on the weather apps).

Stork live! Storchennest Live Webcam in Bad Salzungen, Thüringen www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr5z...

The truest thing I’ve read today….🤣

The Israel government is totally out of order. We should be targeting sanctions on the monster Netanyahu, his government, and his savage IDF now, & haul them before a war crimes court as soon as possible. Lebanon is beginning to look a lot like Gaza 2.0.

Good morning. Greeted by an orange dawn. A Trump sky heralding a sunny start, followed by overcast skies & widespread indiscriminate showers.

Confession. While firing up this new Android for the first time last night, I was confused by the lock screen - specifically, how the time was displayed. It looked something like this: 20 18 And I thought, what? How old is this model? Have I got 8 years of updates to download? 🙄

Tulips. Tarty tulips.

So ... those retailers who immediately put pump prices up because they don't hedge, & buy supplies at (more-or-less) the current price, will immediately drop pump prices, won't they? What do you think, boys and girls? Trump - Iran war. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Things aren't always as they seem... Unpublished #cartoon #gangsters #music

Reading “Healing from Narcissistic Abuse” by a friend of mine, Dr Daksha Hirani, and am struck by this narcissism checklist…

This morning's activities include protecting magpie nest from Open Reach engineers. A neighbour's copper phone wire clips bottom corner of our garden & today an engineer is installing full fibre. The fibre optic will run less than 30cm from the nest. Magpies are notorious for stealing bandwidth.

Good morning. Glad to know the world is still in one piece, although, being fragile & handled recklessly, it has quite a few chips & cracks here & there, & some poor repairs that should ideally be reapplied by a professional. (Today's message was delivered to you by a Flog It expert valuator.)

New mobile up and running. All apps & data transferred successfully. Not so easy when old one is on the blink.

The most stupid thing I've done since the last most stupid thing I've done. While cleaning windows I dropped mobile phone into a bucket of warm water. Phone's generally okay - apart from lousy colour channels not aligning, so every icon, every page, every app looks like a 3D image without the spex.

Despite NASA's achievement, I don't understand why I feel nowhere near as excited by the Artemis II mission as I did (& still do) about the Apollo missions. Maybe age? My world view changed? Space a tiny bit less unknown & unexplored. CGI, AI, PR, hype overload? BSc & MSc in my rear view mirror? 🧪🚀

Good morning. *checks news* Trump not dead yet. *shakes head*

Bad news. Tonight's defeat (a rather low scoring game) means that with only two games to go I can at best only draw this year's University Challenge sofa competition. Good news. I have just completed the Private Eye crossword, having failed to get anywhere near with previous three editions.

Hegseth weaponising Easter comparing the extraction of a US aviator out from Iran to a 2000 year old yarn about a man rising from the dead, tells you all you need to know about this batshit Trump administration.

I have enjoyed being at several of these!

Tried one of these, seeung as it was a freebie. Absolutely disgusting. Awful. 🤮 One small bite was enough. I've never knowingly eaten peanut butter so can't comment on the quality of filling, but the chocolate was tasteless. Basically its a sugar bomb.

Two comedy shows I have enjoyed recently: 1. The return of Mock The Week (TLC), which the BBC made a huge error of cancelling. 2. Last One Laughing (Amazon), which had me gasping for breath several times (often Alan Carr or Bob Mortimer), & the dispatch of Romesh Ranganathan had me on the floor.📺

Ah yes. BST. Clocks SPRING forward in March. That explains a lot.

Very much looking forward to seeing this next month. RSC, Brecht, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui. >>‘It’s the same rhetoric today – really frightening’: Mark Gatiss and Placebo on reviving Brecht’s brutal Hitler satire | Stage | The Guardian share.google/4MZ7dORVeEsk...