It would be an ideal afternoon for sitting in a cool shadowy old parish church for a recital of early 20th century English art song performed well. Warlock, say, or Quilter, with dealcoholised cider to follow.

"He sent his solidarity."

New hardback forthcoming of Bowen's novels The Last September & The Death of the Heart. Intro by #tessahadley Published 30 July 2026 | Everyman’s Library | £17.99 | Hardback '...depths of private tragedy with a subtle ferocity and psychological complexity reminiscent of Henry James.'

The windows have had to be shut because the effing barbecues have been started up again.

A German friend is slightly late, for the first time since I have known him. He is embarrassed or even ashamed in a way that I have no insight into.

Is that not the fragrant Kate Hoey, not Gisela Stuart?

Someone is claiming they somehow sent me a voicemail message by phone: I'm speechless.

We all know about Mozart and G minor, but we don't think at all enough about Joseph Haydn and G minor.

That time of year thou mayst behold

A good analytical history of Artaria, the publishing house, is sorely needed.

Grateful to the past me who decided I should spend today in the very nicely air-conditioned reading room of the British Library's Boston Spa outpost. Have come solely to re-read one paragraph of a specific letter to the editor from a 1926 newspaper, which I will readily accept is not sane behaviour.

If Liz Truss gets her four score years and ten, she will have spent more time at the cenotaph than she did as prime minister.

"Head of Pet at Petinsurance" is an impressive job title.

You don't understand. When it's hot in the country achill gets covered by a thick wet sea fog. I haven't seen the sun in two days and today isn't looking good either. This was midday yesterday and if taken the day off work to enjoy the sun 😭😭😭

The weather isn't bad everywhere in Europe. Bergen, for example.

The Death of the Character

"Head of Pet at Petinsurance" is an impressive job title.

Some of the very best posts here* seem to do no business at all or next to none. Are they too serious or too demanding? We don't know. [* Not referring one way or the other to the present tweeter's stuff, but to good posts by bright people]

It’s a huge one! Today we publish Paradise Lost in the Oxford Milton, ed by Thomas Corns & David Loewenstein. I can’t begin to describe the herculean effort & sheer commitment that the project has demanded of the editors - it’s awe-inspiring to witness this triumph global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Top diplomat: we avoid.

Top scientists: we avoid.

Brezhnev, they say, took it well that people felt comfortable enough to tell jokes about him, but that was in a dictatorship.

It could be a turning point if the whole world is laughing at him.

The stomach is naturally awash with conc HCl, yet the modest amount of citric acid in a glass of diluted elderflower cordial seems to strip the lining of it and of the oesophagus; the mechanism is not well understood.

Did the new technological universities get the legal deposit right to free copies of publications in Ireland under any amendment to the Copyright Act?

Is that not the fragrant Kate Hoey, not Gisela Stuart?

“America hasn't updated its consumer privacy laws since 1988 (when Congress banned the disclosure of your VHS rentals). The EU has the GDPR, but it also has Ireland, the country where all GDPR cases against Big Tech go to die, because any tax haven inevitably becomes a crime haven”

I think of, say, 2002 as roughly the year before last, so it's a shock when the Guardian flags in yellow one of its own articles from that recent year with "This article is four hundred years old".

The heat is bad enough, but the oily smell of some fuel from the barbecues that have been going all around since 17.00 is almost worse.

In the cool, cool, cool of the evening Tell 'em we'll be there If you need a pair of freeloaders To fracture your affair

A "validly elected Ard Chomlaire"

"It's an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That's existing international law," Mr Rubio said. "I don't think we have anybody to convince around here in that regard. I think all the countries in this region would agree with us."

"The ideal bath temperature is around 37-38°C" Golly.

Have they discovered Irish ancestors for Andy Burnham yet?

Google is intruding repeatedly with information about the 'England' match. It had no interest of this kind in any other - not even the 'Scotland' one. It is indifferent to the fact that I have no interest in any of them.

"The mass of men lead lives untroubled by knowledge of any mathematical procedures more complex than long division, and yet they and we have the same vote, each of us."

Better ventilation than even the Gate Theatre too.

When 'one of the lads' goes on and on with one of his obsessions for too long, he often doesn't notice 'the lads' retweeting him less and less and eventually stopping even the pity likes. They are now all growed up and he's the last of 'the lads'. Anyway, all they care about these days is soccer.

"I had to make the salad without beetroot tonight." It's hard to imagine hard-boiled eggs unstained by the purple and without that mouth-puckering industrial vinegar.

Nobody today gets a tonic (or a cough bottle, for that matter) from the chemist. It's all supplements and probiotics and vast tubs of whey. And, for some reason, big bags of Epsom salts.

"Jysk is the new IKEA," a man told me. Dear Reader, it wasn't. It was the new middle aisle, at best.

God bless us and save us, those Mikado biscuits that Jacobs are selling now have shrunk to the size of petits fours, and petits fours at the Ballymaloe House end of the scale at that. Two at a time.

"It's like Bayreuth weather." "I wouldn't know," I said.

I suppose there were things twenty years ago the equivalent of today's blue reflecting pool but we in Europe didn't lie awake at night incensed by their existence. Bliss it was to be ignorant then.

This warm weather is not without its advantages: nameless brownish things are being tugged from deep in the freezer to do duty for dinner. That pheasant from 2023 may see the light of day again. Faisan dans sa sauce aux pruneaux, probably. Possibly. (Or maybe cat food.)

Was it the same with the Ancient Greeks? Did their equivalent of our microblogging polsci and recreational marxian intellectuals desist from their incessant posting about war and politics for the duration of the soccer at Olympia?

"Are you a pensioner?" my stylist asked at the till. "No, it's just the odd fleck of grey," I assured her.

The work on the GPO in Dublin should be finished by the time of the building's centenary in 2029.

I understand that it's at night that the heat is most oppressive.

To give force to a threat of never reposting someone's stuff, having done so even once in the past might be a good start. And in any case, reposting is frowned upon on Bluesky and is just not done.