Former textile mill, Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, Leeds awarded £243k from the National Heritage Lottery Fund to protect fragile hand bound books containing samples of dyed wool fibres dating from 1888 to 1908. 👇 BBC News - £250k funding for historic mill project in Leeds www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The self-help market for writing is saturated with gurus and big promises, which might partly account for the lack of success of my own How To Write course, where I do nothing except tell you to fuck off for 20 years, read a shitload of books and write in whatever way you want to.

Thank you neighbour. What a great idea to put your crap out in the street and block the access to the food composting bin!

Fantastic box hedge at #arundelcastletulipfestival The tulips were pretty good, too.

Wondering if we’ve overdone the tulips and daffs this week.

So that’s it. Farewell HCBs. No seasonal bakery item now until mince pies in December. Or am I missing something?

V interesting lecture by @rakshadigs.bsky.social at #SussexArchaeologicalSociety on public archaeology & public involvement, deftly chaired by @pittsmike.bsky.social Still talking abt it now we’re home. Lots of questions raised abt conflict of “facts” & “storytelling”. Is that what podcasts do?

OK. So the new “learn a new skill to keep your brain working” for me is the continental style of #knitting - & hopefully learning two-colour knitting using a different hand for each colour. This is going to be fun after 60? years of “non-continental” knitting. #nimbleneedles videos look pretty good.

Reading a 1966 history PhD thesis is interesting on a 'meta' level. Huge amount of newspaper & census, poll books etc research - in an era of unsearchable microfilm/original bound copies. But interesting that the resulting thesis is a narrative with v little discussion of wider historiography. #PhD

North Norfolk coast never disappoints

there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for

Gemini: 'I deeply regret the time and effort you spent searching for references that I fabricated. My ‘methodology’ was a series of errors and an attempt to cover those errors with more artificial information.' www.whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com/news/gemini-...

Old Ladybird Books updated (1976). Oops. When you find out a bit late that their helmets didn’t have horns Artist: Roger Hall

Busy day. Fantastic production of The Seafarer at Putney Arts Theatre. And we managed a couple of hours at WWT Barnes in the morning.

Back to the #Archives today. I’d forgotten that vizzing through microfilm can bring in a vertigo attack. Luckily I remembered in time and looked away!

Heartbreaking: Right now, thousands of Puffins are washing up along our coasts and further afield. It is devastating to see. These birds are Red-listed in the UK and already under serious pressure. Mass deaths like this, known as a “seabird wreck”, can take years for colonies to recover from...

Entered the Brighton Workhouse today. Luckily it is now Brighton General Hospital. Not been there before. (Physio appt)

My 1967 copy of Wuthering Heights is looking a bit sad. The sellotape holding the back and front on has gone hard and fallen off. Amongst all the current hype around the film, I want to read it yet again to remind myself what a horrific tale of obsession it is. Maybe finally a time for a new copy?

Whoever does PR for #BritishMuseum has done a great job with #BBCRadio4 on the Samurai exhibition. 3 pieces on the exhibition in 2 days! And those are just the bits I heard.

The Dorestad Brooch ~ Found in 1969 at the bottom of a well, probably ending up there after one of the many viking raids that plagued Dorestad, a major trading hub on the River Rhine close to the North Sea. Created around 775–800 AD, during the reign of Charlemagne.

Once upon a time “global warming” was all about vineyards in North Yorkshire. Nowadays “climate crisis” means wet and windy. All the time. (And I’m not even in the worst-hit areas)

Lovely talk from @markthebirder.bsky.social about the birds in Filey and Bempton, for the Brighton RSBP group. Such great bird photos.

Satellite-tagged Hen Harrier called Edna "suspected illegally killed". Was she killed & dumped at a windfarm in Northumberland as a ploy to cover up the crime? New blog ⬇️ #RaptorResearch #WilldifeCrime 🌍 raptorpersecutionuk.org/2026/01/19/s...

Gheeraerts: Thomas, can you hold the helmet like a regular person? Thomas: …

OK. Anyone want my Mrs Joyful Prize for Raffia work? Would swap for a Booker Prize, Oscar or similar.

I still love #DiggingForBritain but to me this series seems to be concentrating a bit too much on the “lovely treasures” side of archaeology. Not entirely a realistic picture.

Heard a lad earlier talking about ‘Belgian whistles’ “A basic website costs 10k or 25k upwards if you want all the Belgian whistles” BELGIAN WHISTLES

I don’t want to worry anyone but Digging for Britain has just said that the largest UK archaeological dig is currently taking place a stone’s throw from where MR James set A Warning to the Curious.

Instagram keeps showing me #knitting “hacks” for correcting things when you make a mistake. Thing is, I never realised some of these WERE mistakes - I thought they were just, sort of, how I knit.

Good old Macc, eh?

Does anyone (particularly gov departments) ever take “indecisive action”? If not, why swank about you action being “decisive”

Watching an online Zoom preso. Some people’ve kept their cameras on. 1 chap wrapped himself in a sort-of horse blanket, hid his head & went to sleep.The blanket moves from time to time. It’s like a C21st MR James story - watching someone being killed under a blanket while following a Zoom meeting.

So much for 2026 being a new start. So far I’ve been put on a course of antibiotics, and now the raucous cough I’ve had for 5 days has turned into the cold from hell.

‘It was not in his nature to do anything by halves:’ Mary Booth on her husband’s work. No lie detected. I run a course that demystifies Charles Booth’s massive Life & Labour survey and the accompanying Poverty Map. Starts Tue 13 Jan at the Mary Ward Centre, nr Stratford High St DLR short.do/wLa3Vc

First bird of the year? Feral pigeon, of course. Merlin also had a go at telling me it heard a red-throated loon. Unlikely in this little park in the middle of Hove!

This is literally the best thread you’ll see today. Give it a whirl.

I would NOT have done a military gap year. Why would I want to be shouted at, call people sir or ma’m, be at risk of sexual harassment and wear a uniform?

Something lovely for the weekend! Beautiful blue glass beads from the late Bronze Age 💙 Ploughed up by a farmer in Denmark in 1885, analysis shows the beads were made in Mesopotamia, pointing to long-distance trade in luxury goods some 3,000 years ago. 📷 National Museum of Denmark #Archaeology

Blimey. It’s only 9.30 on Dec 27. And the first tree has been thrown out by someone! #RecyclingChristmasTrees

Despite frequent remonstrations from digital archivists, Persephone never accepted that she could not photocopy a whole book in one go.

Something lovely for the weekend! A 1,800 year-old Roman glass flask shaped like a mouse! Squeak squeak! 🐭❤️ 📷 by me www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti... #Archaeology

When you're told 'no more chocolates' but it's okay because you've got deep pockets... Painting: Captain Sir Thomas Dutton, circa 1605-1615, artist unknown. From the collection at Sherborne Park Estate in Gloucestershire.

Like the world wasn’t bad enough. Even a small glimmer of light about reintroduction of birds has to be extinguished.

uh oh

Following yesterdays Cumberland Rum Butter purchase, today’s “buying food from my childhood Christmas” is Scottish Tablet. Known as Granny R Fudge. I was horrified when I found commercial fudge was a strange thing the texture of plasticine. What Granny made was actually tablet: hardish and grainy.

FFS, just go ahead and ban ALL the best people, why don't you.

It is an odd specific of UK govt migration policies that someone, somewhere, seems to think that families fleeing in fear of their lives are diligently keeping up with every new announcement about specific changes to the hostile environment.

Just remembered - I wrote my thesis in #Calibri. I guess Marco Rubio will never be able to read it now. He’ll miss out on an important aspect of Brighton & Hove’s nineteenth century history.