Writing fiction in the third person past tense is starting to feel as stubbornly anachronistic as making studio sitcoms with a laughter track.

Vast improvement on Steve Brine here in Winchester. When Chambers posts it's usually about stuff he's doing, either this or driving a truck to Ukraine. When Brine used to post he was snarky and rude then got in a strop and went off on one.

I had to take a paracetamol this morning. How long have I got left?

Would be up for reading some Thirty Years Wars discourse. Favourite bit me A level, that.

MrL flew to Newark yesterday. Plane more than half empty. Can’t for the life of me imagine why.

Sky News should just be renamed SkyUSNews

"oh but in Italy they would never have a cappuccino after twelve" right but them people don't even grow coffee what would I listen to them for

Customer feedback this week; ‘Please can you get some more diversity at the National Trust by encouraging more hot men to visit.’ Ideas for how we do this v welcome. Nothing too racy please - we are the National Trust not the National Tryst.

Music in supermarkets is tiresome enough, but in a library? They're playing The Kinks whilst people are trying to work. I mean, I like the Kinks but....

Top story on the BBC website any minute now

The finest response I've seen so far.

Ok, that's enough.

Rayner will be off the front page once the Reform conference starts anyway, then it'll be 24 hour frog analysis for the next two weeks. Then it'll be back to wall to wall immigration. All she has to do is go down the Winchester for a pint.

"maxed out the country's credit card" Klaxon

Listening to The News Agents and wishing I had Emily Maitlis' patience. I'd have thrown a plate of lumpy mashed potato at Jon Sopel's head by now. Her restraint is remarkable.

Ice cream vans aside, got my shoulder steroid injection from the 'even posher than Nigel Havers' consultant the other day. Next morning I was able to raise my arm greater than a 45 degree angle for the first time in 6 months. Been impersonating a helicopter for the past two days just because I can.

One good thing about the permanent drizzle outside is that it should deter the ice cream van of evil from constantly... Oh no, hang on, I can hear the siren of doom heading towards the green....goddamn will I ever be free of its icy clutches?

Antwerp Station is rather lovely

Love this lass in Antwerp cathedral making sure her hair looks nice for the tourists

Church bells in the centre of Ghent ringing out“if you go away” by Jacques Brel. Unexpected and extremely lovely.

I did not die

Ooh er. The Historical Novel Society liked my book. The Historical. Novel. Society. Faints. historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-...

Why is this even covered? Trump speaks no sense ever, and nothing he says has any permanence. It’s meaningless gibberish. You can’t analyze it or draw conclusions from it. You may as well talk to a bowl of soup.

flight coming up in a week and shitting myself already. Those of you who like flying - you are clearly nuts.

Melted cat

Just went downstairs from the attic office to get my apple mac, being as how I can't remember why I go into a room these days I was saying "apple, apple, apple" all the way down to make sure I did not forget. Reached the kitchen, took an apple from the fruitbowl, came back upstairs....

I am in the PUB. Happy hour treat is a lamb sausage with “potato bun” apparently. Never heard of a potato bun and not about to find out.

Love* it when an author (not me in this case) gets a 1* review because the book arrived in a damaged package. *Hate

Whenever I try a new Nigella recipe I automatically check that I have vermouth in the cupboard before reading the ingredients.

Holiday booked. Get in! Any tips for Brussels and the surrounding area?

This whole thread is a mine of fabulous nuggets of information

Watching the press preview and cannot believe Christina Patterson is older than me. She looks fantastic.

Sky news has been banging on about immigration on their news report for nearly ten minutes like it’s the most important thing in the entire world ever and honestly my reaction with it when they ran it as the headline was “oh fuck off with this again” and I threw a shoe.

Well, found no record of measles on my medical record, neither could the practice so they told me to come in and get it with the advice "you're better to be over vaccinated than undervaccinated". So I've asked for three doses of everything they've got.

Going to be playing Witcher 3 this evening so any advice please go ahead - yes I know I’m ten years behind

My timeline today is all a bit "oh grow up, ffs" and "are you ever satisfied" and it's like having a stroppy teenager in the house all over again.

Attempt number 47 at getting this manuscript draft reduced. >proceeds to add another 7k words. fml

Susie Boniface is 🔥 on the Sky press review at the moment.

Alex Deane accusing Zoe Williams of falling for the Hitler Diaries just now was something of a wtf moment. Never a dull moment.

Mike Catt (England rugby person) made me a cup of tea

Listen up, you can read a post about my GENIUS* research techniques here. *pushing it a bit.

Wish we had circles on here right now.

Omg. MrLunch’s 80+ yr old mum went missing in Portugal (they live there). His dad is over here atm so she was on her own. Everyone freaking out she’s not answering calls. Gets home five minutes ago, pissed, having spent the night with a mate boozing. Phone dead. God love her.

Argentinian national anthem going on for three hours here

It was too hot to sleep - he’s not wrong youtu.be/4KP9PNSUME4?...

Ok I need some garden help. Chalky Hants soil. Will put info in the ALT text but I basically need tips on what to put here which isn’t lavender. First two pic face west and are tragic, third pic faces east and is much more lively. I want them all to look like pic 3.

Dinner in the diner Nothing could be finer Than to empty a cat litter After drinking two pints On an empty stomach Woo woo Chattanooga There you are

Sitting in a pub on my own with a pint of peroni my mother would be disgusted and accuse me of wanton behaviour. Ffs.

Just created the most beautiful spreadsheet ever with a series of incremental tests, all of which worked perfectly, until I got to the last one and it failed. Yes, I have to do it again. Yes, I hate my job sometimes. No, not as much as the dev who will have to fix it. Joke's on him.