I think thats is a really powerful post.

Speak Truth....

Victorian SW wing of St Pancras Hospital. Previously a workhouse. Dismal, run-down building. An in-patient hospital for those with severe psychiatric disorders & learning disabilities. Surely, the most needy deserve a better building than this. Last CQC inspection said psychiatric services unsafe.

Levita House, LCC (arch: George Topham Forrest) 1927-1931. Modernist with steel-frame construction, Grade II, to rehouse residents from the Somers Town slums. When I worked in Copenhagen Street Primary in 80s I walked past here often. Today: homeless ppl on the steps. Let's build like this again.

The Chenies. St Pancras. Late 40s social housing in Art Deco Streamline Moderne style. Well designed and affordable. Built by St Pancras Borough Council; when Labour Councils & the Labour Government built social housing rather than assisting private capital to make a mint & build unaffordable house.

Fascinating. The base of a now dead Ash, in St Pancras Gardens, shows the shape, & has relict pieces, of the pile of tombstone in which it grew. Thomas Hardy, novelist but then apprentice architect, exhumed the bodies & cleared the monuments of the graves lost to the building of the Midland Railway

The Coming of Age at Wellcombe Collection, Euston Rd. Superb. The art, history, sociology, poltics, economics & science of aging. As usual, a politically & sociologically informed presentation of an important cultural topic. As usual, I learned more about art at the Wellcome than at the Tates!

Tracey Emin at @tate.bsky.social Modern. The self-styled "working class" artist presumably agreed to her exhibition at Tate being sponsored by Gucci. But, she sold her "bed" to Charles Saatchi for £150 000. The Saatchis who kept the Tories in power; further impoverishing working class people.

Mudlarking and lichenology. South Bank. Southwark. Wooden remains of the piles of a wharf. Protoparmeliopsis muralis and Lecanora campestris on the concrete walls of the embankment just above high-water line, near Millennium Bridge.

www.lbc.co.uk/article/ed-m... Any residual shred of respect I had, as an ex-Labour GND campaigner, for Ed Milliband, has now completely gone. End this planet-destroying Labour government as soon as possible

The apotheosis of Brighton. On the 2 bus last night. Birdyman (Tim Bat) going home after a day of selling Duck Quakers. "Stop Me to Buy The Duck Quaker"

Kensal Green Cemtry has a grear collection of planted trees; all now mature. The avenues of White & Black Poplar are stunning plus many veteran Horse Chestnuts. Black Polar symbolises grief, transformation & the underworld in Greek mythology. Victorians were fully versed in the symbolism of death.

At Kensal Green cemetery the options for a tomb in the C19 seemed to have been neo-Gothic, neo-Classical or neo-Egyptian. Victorian death culture seemed to be obsessed with the past. If you are interested in Victorian funeral architecture and art Kensal Green is a must!

From Monday. Kensal Green. Crow strikes a pose to enhance the purposeful Gothic ambience one of the Big 7 Victorian London cemeteries.

Today is an exciting day: I have relaunched Inkcap! New website, new branding, lots of in-depth reporting on nature in Britain coming your way. Please share & help me get this thing off the ground. www.inkcap.co.uk/inkcap-is-ba...

Just announced: our annual Day Out in Sussex, taking place on 2nd May. Now in its 5th year, it is a unique day of talks, music, food and beer spread across the Downland village of Kingston, a few miles from both Lewes and Brighton. Full details and tickets: www.caughtbytheriver.net/2026/03/caug...

1/2 Fancy getting into lichens and mosses? A graveyard is a good place to start. These are very common species that are easy to ID. A typical Sussex calcareous gravestone, in St Mary's Pulborough. Circinaria calcarea, Verrucaria nigrescens, Protoblastenia rupestris,

Half a million strong. Together. The biggest march against the far-right in British history.

Rocky Rook likes train spotting, so he lives in a Rookery at Barnham Station, West Sussex. He has noticed that sometimes there are few trains to spot at Barham because the Brighton to Portsmouth/Southampton line frequently has points failures, stuck level crossings gates and staff shortages.

"I've got a juicy worm to eat" Blackbird. "I've got some Tephromela atra to parasitise" Lecanora sulphurea. St. Mary's Churchyard, Pulborough, West Sussex. T. atra above L. sulphurea below. L. sulphurea is one of the few lichens that parasitise other lichens, particularly T. atra.

As I say when I'm leading bird walks, behaviour is just as interesting as what the species is. These Wood Pigeons, Columba palumbus, were eating the seeds in the samara (winged fruits) of Field Elms, Ulmus minor, in Queen's Park Brighton. @rspb.bsky.social @sussexornitholo.bsky.social #birds 🪶

In my local park, Queen's Park, Brighton, there's a huge agglomoration of Adrena flavipes (Yellow-legged Mining Bees) in a heap of sand (grassed over) in the children's playground. Only around for a few weeks, twice a year. Last year their brood parasites, Nomada fucata, were there too.

Chlorociboria sp. stained wood - yesterday in Views Wood, Buxted - was high prized by weald cabinet makers, as they used it to make the green-blue inlays of Tunbridge Ware, made in Tunbridge Wells (High Weald) stock pboto)

Male plants of Mnium hornum; with beautiful, flower-like inflorescences at the tips of their shoots. Views Wood. Buxted. East Sussex

Wild Daffodil, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, with a Bibio sp. fly, March flies or St. Mark's flies, Views Wood, Woodland Trust. Buxted. East Sussex

Bark Barnacles, Thelotrema lepadinum, indicative of longstanding woodland conditions (ecological continuity). Views Wood, Woodland Trust, Buxted, East Sussex

For all the people who keep thinking it's the monarchy that own the most... 🤔 We are the only country in the world that was invaded by William the Conqueror - who then gave vast parcels of land to his barons. In most cases,their descendants still own it. It's way beyond time that this was changed.

Excellent. I hope this leads to more access to land for all; and perhaps bringing some land that the landed gentry squander through game bird shooting and coniferization into public ownership. And perhaps when we realise how much land a few people own, the logic of a Land Value Tax will be obvious.

Released in UK & Irish cinemas on 8th May, Orban Wallace’s 'Our Land' follows the @righttoroam.bsky.social movement, asking the timely question: who has the right to roam in the English countryside? www.caughtbytheriver.net/2026/03/our-...

Wind-blown Oak 3. Interesting branch! Top: Flavoparmelia sorediens; Lecanora chlarotera s.l. (brown apothecia); Melanelixia subaurifera (dark green lobes) Bottom: Xanthoria parietina (yellow); Glaucomaria carpinea (light yellow apoth.), Lecidella elaeochroma (black apothecia). Ramalina fastigiata

Wind-blown Oak 2. With some interesting things: Ramalina canariensis; Hypotrachyna revoluta, and the very noticeable pink blob of the lichenicolous fungus Illosporiopsis christiansenii, on a Physcia sp. lichen (they also parasitise Xanthoria spp. and Parmelia lichens). Pagham Harbour, West Sussex

Wind-blown Oak 1. This coastal Q. robur is covered in lichens, especially Ramalina spp., Flavoparmelia caperata & Evernia prunastri; but lots more too. It is on the edge of a saltmarsh at Pagham Harbour on the coastal plain. Oaks grow small when constantly buffeted by wind; its older than it looks

Ulmus minor, Field Elm, in Nunhead Cemetery. Apparently there are still approximately 4,000 Elms in Greater London. It is estimated that there are approximately 8.4 million trees in Greater London.

In February 2026, annual gross median wage of a UK employee was £31,032, £25,863 after income tax and NIC. Hard to survive, raise families, buy home, save for pension. 1% have more wealth than 70% of the population combined. Can't grow economy without equitable distribution of income and wealth.

1/2 If Tim Burton is looking for a cemetery to shoot a new film, I'd thoroughly recommend Nunhead, London. It is the apotheosis of Gothick (with a capital G & a final K).

And after the Look of Love (see earlier post), the Kiss. Ring-Necked Parakeets. Nunhead Cemetery, London.

London Gothic. Decapitated Angel and Clipped-wings Angel (on the Chapel). Nunhead Cemetery, London. I think there is something much more disturbing about the latter than the former.

1/2 Teeth! The Grotesques around the pinnacles of the Neo-Gothic Anglican Cemetery Chapel, Nunhead, London, 1844, really are grotesque. Designed by Thomas Little.

The strangest grave inscriptions I've seen. "The Spring of Life is Broken", which, apparently refers to Jeremiah 2:13, where it signifies turning away from God—the source of living water. But this looks like a mechanical leaf spring; a broken spring or turning from God? Former sounds more plausible.

The dinosaurs at Crystal Palace are getting a make over.

Jay in Nunhead Cemetry, London

The Look of Love. Ring-Necked Parakeets. Nunhead Cemetry, London.

Victorian Nunhead Cemetry, London. Upside-down torches, symbols of death, mounted with Egyptian ouroboroi, serpents eating their own tails, representing eternal life. Victorians knew how to do gothic cemeteries.

A new blog post on trees, lichens, wild flowers and buildings in the pasture farmland, woodland and commons of the Sussex landscape where the low weald meets the high weald.

A Peacock Butterfly yesterday on last year's Purple Moor Grass and a Sphagnum sp., poss. S. cuspidatum, in the valley bog at Hesworth Common, Fittleworth, West Sussex. In summer the bog has Bog Asphodel and Sundew. The photos of the Bog Asphodel and Sundew are from this bog in July 2024.

Cladonia foliacea, typically a coastal lichen of sand dunes & vegetated shingle, but also in West Sussex on the Greensand lowland heaths; here at the lichen-rich Hesworth Common, Fittleworth, where I am leading a beginners' lichen walk for the Woodland Trust's Lost Woods of the Low Weald & Downs

Genus Chrysothrix, Gold Dust Lichens, prob. C. candelaris on a veteran Quercus robur (Pedunculate Oak). Hesworth Common, Fittleworth. The old Oaks are left, but the invasive Silver birch are removed creating much light. C. candelaris likes the shaded sides of rough-barked trees in well-lit woodland.

Hesworth Common. Lowland heath is a rare threatened habitat of great biological importance. Created initially by bronze age woodland clearance; maintained in small areas as commons, with rights of taking wood & grazing, and now actively managed. Leaving if to natural succession would destroy it.

This veteran Oak in the High Weald Woodland (Monday) is covered in the lichen Dendrographa decolorans. It's very common. It often covers large areas of trees. It's a pinky grey crust. Because it has no shape it could be seen as a discolouration of the bark rather than a lichen. Look out for it!