If you’ve never seen one you’ve missed a treat. They are the most gorgeous colour.

With matter-of-fact precision, Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir powerfully chronicles the shock of discovering her husband’s crimes and the rallying cry that followed. “It seeks a proper transfer of shame from sex-crime victims to their perpetrators, and the perpetrators’ enablers,” our book critic writes.

For those of you who like facts, this is all we actually know. www.nhsfife.org/news-updates...

Practising my Susan B. Anthony face you have been warned

In other news the OH has gifted me cinnamon dusted almonds in honour of the day and this is an inspirational choice as we are giving up certain cocoa adjacent items for Lent.

Good morning skylarks. A feminist question has just crossed my mind. Why do proponents of female modesty always advocate for skirts not trousers? Surely trousers are more covering and protecting of the er, parts, than skirts are?

Good afternoon clerical skylarks from the diocese of Liverpool if any. Talk to me about Larger Single Parishes. A good thing?

A minor outbreak of common sense. There’s a big difference between criminal activities which should be prosecuted and terrorism.

Obviously zero reflection in any of this on how operating the largest empire in human history may have turned us into a multicultural nation. We are here because you were there. #Empireland www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Here’s an odd thing, skylarks. The new ‘draft’ function appears on my iPhone but not on my iPad. Why should that be?

Good evening skylarks. There’s a terrific draft in here (joke, niche, people my age, for the use of). Just tried it out 👍

Good morning churchy skylarks. Have you written your book about how to fix the @churchofengland.org yet? 😐

Morning skylarks. This made me smile

Tee-hee!😀 From the current @privateeyenews.bsky.social. ✝️

Good morning to anyone who is experiencing one of life’s misfortunes and has just been sent 6,000 birthday cards which according to news reports seems to be a regular thing now. What puzzling creatures we human beings are.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Encouraging results in this use of menstrual blood for diagnosis

I call this very feeble. Instead employ the Marjorie Phelps technique as recorded in ‘Strong Poison’ when Lord Peter asks her to dine with him. ‘Peter, I’d adore to, but I don’t think I will. I’ve an awful lot to do’.

My conclusion is that the political ball known as women’s rights is still very much in play but fewer people are willing to catch and throw it personally. Safer to sit on the sidelines and say little until we see how the game is likely to turn out.

Someone on t’other place recently assured me that mixed sex spaces are actually safer for women than single sex spaces because if a man harasses or attacks you in a mixed sex space the other men will protect you and that’s the level of delulu we currently seem to be dealing with.

One day in the postmodern West the question of women’s rights came up for renegotiation. Women did not really need these rights any longer and would not be harmed by losing them, it was argued. In fact there was evidence to suggest that they would be better off, happier and safer without them.

Good morning skylarks. Who are your go-to sources of authority as you seek to make sense of the world around you? In whom do you repose trust and why?

On t’other place there are not only accounts posting AI slop but actual AI slop accounts that do nothing but post AI originated ‘stories’ that people engage with as if they were real, hence making money for their human curators. The next iteration will probably bypass the human curators altogether 😬

Its not just depressing, it’s deeply disturbing. AI is babbling away like an idiot, churning out a tsunami of gobbledygook, fake facts and broken twisted images, and billions of people are ingesting it. Melding truth and lies in this way is not far off demonic IMVHO www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Absolutely should be funding employed children’s, youth and family ministers (training and ongoing support to enable parishes to employ).

After decades of guarding the financial deposit the national @churchofengland.org is currently in spendy mode but what should it be funding and why? No doubt we all have our views 🤔

Unfortunately describing someone as an EGOT will never not sound like an insult to me 😆

A lovely candlelight choral evensong yesterday to mark the end of Christmastide and also celebrate the fledging of another of our curates into a new identity as Associate Priest. Pink prosecco and cakes afterwards 😊

I think I know how this is going to end 🫤

*thinks* I Really Must Do My Tax Return 😆

Did I mention that we had a wonderful Week of Prayer for Christian Unity celebration on Sunday? All churches, all ages represented, did 100 service sheets and we ran out, and the collection was £375 😊

A rich but heavy few days listening to Palestinian Christians in Jerusalem, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem. The “slow suffocation” (words said to us) of the occupation is accelerating in the West Bank. “They are doing their best to ruin our lives here to make us want to leave.”

Long sobering read here.

Stained looking glass window. I may even make a special pilgrimage to see it.

Dedicating this to all those who invent or imagine constraints and then exhaust themselves trying to conform to them. ‘Practise a little now …’

Open access libraries … and rooms of our own. Good morning, feminists.

The rights of Christians (or members of other faiths) in the workplace is a good test case. A workplace is not inclusive if people are treated less favourably because of their religion. But a workplace does not have to allow people to behave in certain ways eg wearing a cross in a clinical setting.

Belief is possibly the trickiest of the protected characteristics. Society upholds a person’s right to have a belief and within reason to fashion their life around it. That doesn’t oblige others to share that belief or even respect it. It’s the person with the belief not the belief that’s protected.

Well today I’m musing on the subject of protected characteristics, what it is about them that merits protection and what that protection should look like in practice. Sex, for instance, is a protected characteristic but that doesn’t give a woman the right to say and do anything she pleases.

I sometimes wonder if postmodern society has lost the ability to distinguish between ‘arguing’ (broadcasting an opinion in a loud voice) and ‘argument’ (advancing a proposition and supporting it with logic, facts and evidence) 🤔

Good morning skylarks. Got a point to make? Let’s hear it. You might even win the argument. Campaigning to silence dissenting voices? You’ve already lost the argument. Sit down.

It’s wild to me that many people are still pondering and analysing the sounds that come out of Trump’s mouth as though any of them actually meant anything 🤷‍♀️

This has all the dignity and gravitas of one kid twisting another kid’s arm up their back to give him the contents of their lunch box 😂

I’m all in favour of people leaving one party and joining another if that’s their conviction but there’s no need to be a complete polecat about it 🤨

Help me here, skylarks, our all singing all dancing new fridge has a thing called ‘sabbath mode’ indicated by a tiny menorah icon. Has anyone else come across this and what is it for?

If I’d been writing a dystopian novel about a bombastic dictator and his sinister henchmen the names Trump and ICE would have worked really well so maybe life does imitate art after all.

I can empathise with this 😆

Reassuring to know the UK isn’t completely spineless when it comes to protecting the safety and dignity of women. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My question about libraries is always the same. Can you read the books? All the books? Not just the books the person(s) responsible for the library want you to see?

Deep and crisp and even.

Trump’s ballroom is getting taller.