I have designated today as an Official Gardening Day. Reader, I am still in my kitchen wondering what else I can eat to postpone it.

Derwentwatter yesterday. Autumn is definitely making its presence known. We've had 5 days of cloud inversions in the Eden Valley. It's a lovely time of year.

AVIVA. Encourage repeat custom by not doubling your car insurance quote, and not being 100 quid more expensive than your nearest competitor.

From 1873, the new Brussels Bourse brought moneyed middle-classes into what used to be a tangle of ancient streets, in search of aspirational consumption opportunities. In 1892, a furrier in rue des Chartreux called Hüsgen opened the Greenwich Tavern. Speciality: English beer.

GOOD MORNING! Pubs are struggling. The 2026 Good Beer Guide is "a triumph". Craft beer is still growing in India. Gen Z really isn't drinking. BrewDog beers have lost their edge. Nobody really knows which is the oldest pub in London. New Boddies is "drinkable". 🍺🍻 boakandbailey.com/2025/09/news...

Things are different here.

He can stick his digital fucking ID cards, endorsed by a 'Blair thinktank' up his hoop. Please come and rescue us, Andy Burnham.

Really tasteful and low-key addition to Penrith's Georgian town square.

It's the regular Ferrari-Farage love fest over on LBC. Emetic.

Remember in the good old days before enshitification when thermostats were a little clock on the wall that never, ever went wrong and before some arseholes in silicon fucking valley decided we needed smart WiFi thermostats and the skills of a Bletchley Park codebreaker just to have a fucking bath

This is an absolute banger from the Lidl festbier Überraschungsbox. Clean as a whistle. I think I might need to pay a visit to Annafest in Forcheim.

ACHTUNG

Aspatria, very West Cumbria

Aspatria, very West Cumbria.

HEATING'S ON LADS #summerhasfallen

I'm THIS >< close to turning the heating on.

"There's a growing demand for traditional beer. It's getting harder to find." Hook Norton Brewery, 1974. Another treasure from the BBC Archive. youtu.be/HHDESSHVpcc?...

KEIR STARMER'S BRITAIN

Are we SERIOUSLY supposed to believe that this is the third best sheep in the Aire Valley? #wakeup

EVERYTHING IS ABSOLUTELY FINE www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...

Fucking. Hell.

Could it be? Noel and Liam popping to The Boltmakers Arms for a pint of Boltmaker... Find out more: www.timothytaylor.co.uk/news/slide-away-boltmakers-arms-when-oasis-sponsored-pub-football-team

Church Street, Leeds, 1970, photo by Peter Mitchell.

Can we have a state visit for Jamie Raskin?

So good to see Jennings, the much-loved Cumbrian brewery, back in operation after being cruelly axed by Carlsberg. Classic ales in fine form, brewing to capacity, may have to expand. Article to follow @camraofficial.bsky.social Beer Magazine. #BskyBeer

Notable, perhaps, that nearly all the union jacks zip-tied to lamp posts on North Street in Keighley are upside down.

Google's AI search function is like when you're down the pub having a chat with your mate and a bloke wearing a tracksuit with shoes is eavesdropping on your conversation and keeps butting in with his opinion.

More Beamish. It's really quite haunting.

'Living museums' can so easily slide into Facebook meme nostalgia mawkfest, but I thought Beamish was tremendous. This is from the 50s, but very like my dear grandma's kitchen in the 80s. I half expected her to walk in wearing her blue gingham pinny and ask me if I'd like a slice of Battenberg cake

Jennings Sneck Lifter is back - on draught! At the rather lovely Curfew micropub in Berwick. Reminded us of Bier Paleis in Bruges.

My great-uncle Ernest did his infantry training with Royal Scots Fusiliers in Berwick. Reading his memoirs, I'm pretty sure this is the spot he and his comrades were machine-gunned by a JU88 while on church parade in April 1941. They were all unhurt - "we didn't wait to be dismissed".

Berwick upon Tweed. As neat as a pin.

That's not a second-hand bookshop. THIS is a second-hand bookshop.

Just paid £3.95 for a takeaway coffee. Has the world changed or have I changed?

Pedal through any Dutch city, and it feels like it’s always been filled with red cycle paths. But the fact is urban cycling infrastructure didn’t exist anywhere until 1975, when a trial project in Tilburg laid the basis of a national standard for legibility, comfort, and status for people on bikes.🧵

Oh, piss off. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

I have discovered a pile of Nigel droppings under my bed tonight.

LBC having a normal one this morning. "Is the UK in decline?" asks Penny Mordaunt, one of the mob who spent 14 years ruining the country.

Has the Ministry Of Enshitification got to crumpets? They all now seem to have a fireproof coating that means it takes about 90 minutes to toast them.

Bloody typical bank holiday traffic.

Harold. Don't break your shield wall when the Normans pretend to run away. I'll be shouting that at the TV like I do when I plead with Gordon Jackson to not reply in English to the Gestapo officer in the Great Escape.

Oh, Jimmy Mac, When will the meat be back?

I'll be talking about 'Made in Manchester' at Audlem and District History Society, Cheshire, on Thursday October 16th, 7.30pm. Scout and Guide Hall, Cheshire Street. Visitors welcome, £4.

Graphic designer Joe Caroff passed away yesterday at age 103. Responsible for absolutely legendary posters and typefaces. www.printmag.com/daily-heller...

Well done everybody

Meanwhile, in Gotham City #cumbriaproblems

If that even is the real Putin. In my old job I must have seen a zillion images of the evil bastard. He clearly uses doubles, and of variable quality - some of them wouldn't even win seventh prize in a Look Like Putin contest

Day three. We are still constructing IKEA units. This is our life now. This is all we know. We have always been at war with Oceania

Wondering what's happened to the Kirkstone Pass Inn? This is what's happened to Kirkstone Pass Inn. Sorry. I mean "Kirkstone Manor Lake District Mountain Lodge". www.airbnb.co.uk/rooms/148179...

You know when you go to a zoo, and they have a special room with hundreds of butterflies fluttering around? That's currently our house, but with massive brown moths, many of which are unknown to science