OM*G*. This is the single best homeopathy zinger I've ever seen. Hall of fame stuff!

Around Pirton

VERY IMPORTANT ARTICLE ON TODAY’S DOD EVENTS

Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts was detained by ICE this morning🤬 Roberts, 52, was born to immigrant parents from Guyana & has led the Des Moines Public Schools district since July 2023. www.weareiowa.com/video/news/e...

Spent time this morning visiting the neighbourhood where I grew up with an old friend. We visited both the homes we grew up in, the 4 schools we attended together, where we first saw a goldfinch together, where we played football and tennis and Bletchley Park. All in less than 1 square mile.

I visited some childhood snickets this morning in Bletchley @nicwilson.bsky.social . With an old school friend. Where we did nature study especially caterpillar gathering.

Where my life began , and where I saw the Queen

Good morning from Olney water meadows

Just found my step father’s copy of Gordon Benningfield’s butterflies

Two years ago , in Richmond Park

Back to Olney. Delighted to hear that my mum , at 92, has just started playing whist again and has taken up knitting again too. Sudden memories of the Three Day Week and the time I discovered a copy of the Brothers Karamazov in her quilted knitting basket.

On the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railway (#OTD 1825), here’s my memoir of growing up on the East Coast Main Line, where I witnessed of the demise of the steam age. #Railway200 pamelaclemit.wordpress.com/2024/10/25/n...

Autumn and spring this year. The berries and the blossom

Free this Thursday? Come and spend a lovely autumn day stretching your writing muscles at Paxton Pits in Cambridgeshire. Everyone welcome! #naturewriting #booksky #Cambridgeshire @wildlifebcn.org @summersdalebooks.bsky.social

Poplars and holm oak

Hullo #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social #poetry

The poet Tony Harrison has died. For me, he was the most important poet of my lifetime. He gave speech to the tongue-tied and used the masks of classical theatre to amplify the voices of the working class.

Nathan Gill is no fringe politician. He was the leader of the Reform Party and before that UKIP in Wales. A Brexit Party MEP. A friend and ally of Nigel Farage, who in 2016 called him: "terrific," and "as honest as the day is long." This is a MASSIVE story www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A 64-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life after a fire at a London hotel housing asylum seekers. This is where we are now. Where are the politicians to call this out? Or do they not want to upset their right wing base? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Swanage this morning.

How is this not front page news? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

So dark this morning. The pier, stoic, weathered and splintered, wears the constant push and pull of slate and foam against its stubborn pilings. The sky a lid of unbroken cloud, heavy with unshed rain. But the horizon bleeds a slow fire licking at the undersides of the clouds.

And a willowherb which hadn’t entirely succumbed to autumn

A wonderful walk around Kingston Lacy- lots of trees and a close encounter with a Rembrandt self portrait. Some more reading of Mary Midgely- a philosopher who I can almost understand 😊 Two attempts at poetry outlined.

Listening to Katharine Houreld speak about this right now. Her basic ethical demand: let the politicians who make aid cuts look in the faces of the global poor & say yes, we know your children are going to starve to death. That’s is our choice. Have the courage to tell the damn truth.

Well done, PM: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A green day

Good night

When the Labour Club at Oxford University split in 1940 over Russian aggression there were squabbles between the new factions over the correct division of financial assets. As a result there was was much correspondence back and forth to Dear Comrade Jenkins and Dear Miss Murdoch.

Just wait till they introduce ego and superego cards

We have people in power making broad claims around certain drugs and autism that have been continuously disproven.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Elements

For those who might like a copy! 😉 www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/books/l... #BookSky

"The High Seas Treaty has reached the threshold of 60 governments signing it into law, clearing the way for it to enter into force. This is the most important global agreement on the environmental crisis since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement" www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/histori...

🖤🖤

Next on my reading list. Unfortunately was too late to book for Jenny Uglow’s talk at the Linnean Society in December☹️

This morning’s Mary Midgely story. The membership of political parties in Oxford University in 1935 was so intermeshed that committees of the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, and the Conservative Club were simultaneously in the Communist Party.😊

Sorry, but book is out next week & promo I must. You know - 3 yrs work & all that, & through some big stuff. And the wonderfully kind @joannacdobson.bsky.social has said this about it; & I’m utterly made up: “there’s a universality about it …I’ve never read anything quite like it.’ #booksky

Proof that universalities are left wing. In 1938 there was a by- election in Oxford in which the Master of Balliol, A.D Lindsay, tried to unseat Quinton Hogg for supporting Neville Chamberlain’s ‘ Peace agreement’ with Hitler 😊

The Swanage Dimetrodon

Our painting and the original

Just to be clear: - Paracetamol does not cause autism. - Sadiq Khan is not introducing Sharia law in the UK - We do not have a massive free speech problem here. - Britain is not on the verge of civil war. These are not controversial subjects or contested, they're just not true.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Ignore the haters, London is the 🐐

Before there was The Salt Path and even long before A Year in Provenance , there was this delightful memoir set in Purbeck. It even has characters straight out of Lord of the Rings, and I met a friend in its pages forty years before I met her in real life.

Look! The silk-smoky glimmering of bedwine appearing with the Michaelmas, Mop, Hiring & Goose Fairs, to light us through the winter, from Dorset, to Herts, Hants, Berks, Wilts & beyond.

I managed to photograph a swallow. Extreme bottom left😊