It’s Christmas. Here’s a dog.

Do you do a daily gratitude list? I try. When I do, two items appear every time: my wife & BBC Radio 3.

This is an article about academic writing about prisons but actually it is about all writing & meaning & what matters. It is right and wise and beautiful. It is by my dear friend, Alison Liebling. Please read it. I can’t wait for her book. doi.org/10.53386/nil...

Thank to Past Me for clearly understanding the bass part here.

I have somehow set up the BBC Sport app to notify me only of the fortunes of the Afghanistan cricket team. I am thus informed by way of bright ping when every wicket falls. I have no idea how or why I did this, nor any clue as to how to change it.

It’s ‘social’ media, people! A completely unexpected and rather wonderful joy to recognise @janecasey.bsky.social at Marylebone and in the 5 mins before my train fan-boy her on just how gripping her writing is. @teaforpterosaur.bsky.social , we missed you.

I am in the dungeon in Windsor Castle. This is why and why I wouldn’t be anywhere else. The works choir is singing evensong in St George’s Chapel shortly. Please tell us to break her leg.

Back at Shell-Mex house literally 40 years since I was last in it. I was an intern (not that we used that word) at Shell between school and university. She has long departed the building, but I’m here to lunch with a friend whose company now occupies part of it.

This is the current display in our canteen in the office. In other news, I am fat.

Albert would like you know he is slightly surprised by, and very disappointed in, you

In a cafe, reading Ben McIntyre’s account of the Iranian Embassy siege; shoulders shaking with silent laughter at this passage. Never mind the SAS, this is the Pride of Britain

Just like the old days! A delight to meet @brummybar.bsky.social IRL on the Chiltern. She is coming up to Town to do God’s work in the Court of Appeal: I’m going to push some pixels around and eat lunch.

Looking forward to the follow-up Salt Path film where the couple (played by Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs) are hunted by a furious Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs (Emily Blunt and The Rock).

I laughed so hard I dropped my phone into the abyss under the ottoman

So much this.

Total mic drop on the last line, but… why did both Hannan and Johnson reach for the ball gag metaphor here? Did one of them nick it off the other? Was it some kind of hilarious banter they came up with together the night before? Or are they both just VERY WEIRD? (Alt text in following post)

Tom McKinney has just done a link on 3 Breakfast “From Eric Whitacre to Eric Morecombe..” and I’m not sure my day can get any better.

I’ve got a joke about Hercules and with a bit of effort I might just tell it.

Outside the US, reaction to the Trump administration's stance on DEI has gone from bemusement to concern. Join us on 30 April not just to hear from us but network with your peers and hear how they're dealing with the this and other issues. Our food's great & the view incomparable.

Ok Flo, ok Joan: take it away.

Today is the first day in 2025 when my inbox is under control. There may be a second, possibly in the late Autumn. Like a sort of bi-annual Easter, depending on a celestial calendar.

@gemdale.bsky.social welcome!

I mean, London: flipping heck #nofilter

What a gig! Birmingham Contemporary Music Group celebrating reggae, Handsworth & Bob Marley. Cutting edge World premier string quartet weaved into classic Steel Pulse. Town Hall sold out: audience young old black white: everyone on their feet at some point. Unconfined joy, everywhere.

Time to shut the laptop and have some lunch.

Lawyers, ever logged back on late in the evening to do something mundane but necessary - say, a timesheet - but something in the day is just niggling away & you just can't help pulling out some case law & the text book for a quick check & hello why is it nearly midnight & worse why don't I care?

I’ve never watched The Traitors and to be honest it’s not as good as never watching Love Island.

The cat has promoted itself to “dog“. It has occupied the miniature schnauzer’s bed and is farting gently at my feet as I work.

Separated by a common language

This weekend I went even lower

More panto, but just for grown-ups.

Double-decker train!!!!

Frosty morn made moan

Family trip to the panto 2024.

“You will be visited by three spirits” The three spirits

Ok, it’s King’s on the wireless, Delia & Nigella queens in the kitchen. Christmas cooking begins; Christmas begins.

🎶”In the Bleak Midwinter..”🎵

UK all through Christmas

This morning’s swim, beneath the ruins of Guys Cliffe House.

Lawyers rightly complain when politicians, the media and the public associate us with our clients, leading to immigration law firms being targeted by neo-Nazis. So why do some lawyers also willingly do it to ourselves? Isn't that rather hypocritical? lag.org.uk/article/2163...

Americans who sound like Carabao Cup ties

Reactivating this account to promote my Substack, Bleak House Revisited, writing about English law, legal history, literature and London. First post on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill which passed its second reading in the House of Commons yesterday open.substack.com/pub/bleakhou...

Here @barbararich.bsky.social brings her usual thoughtfulness to a difficult subject. Worth reading whatever your present view on The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, or if you as yet have no fixed view

@teaforpterosaur.bsky.social oh here you are! Have you been here for ages and I’ve just been obtuse?

Starting tomorrow, I'm posting a #LiteraryAdventCalendar - little excerpts & snippets from other authors - but I'm pre-empting it with one from my own archive: a New Statesman competition entry in which the brief was to write a love letter from one literary character to another:

I've been a trial lawyer for 17 years and taught litigation skills for around 10. Shoutout to the junior lawyer who just sent me an email advising "As you may be aware, parties to litigation have obligations related to the disclosure of records that are relevant to the lawsuit."

Always very exciting when we play an away game.

'Oh, the magic spontaneity of interactions, the synergy of togetherness' versus the brutal truth of 'it is so much easier to be able to take someone aside and go "what is our path to revenue?" "Why are we doing this?"'

Unaccountably often @londonreview.bsky.social arrives and then sit in its wrapper, unloved and unopened, because, well, who has time? And then I pick it up for a long journey and I read an article like this and it’s worth the whole damn subscription as well as all the guilt.

Tiergarten this morning; Alte Pinotek this afternoon. There is no confectionery, inexplicably, in either photograph. #autumninBerlin