PSA for fellow sober types seeking the hedonistic thrills of their youth: a R White’s lemonade ice lolly melted into a Lucky Saint is a surprisingly elevated shandy.

I had a massage last night that was so good I went on a little trip through my own viscera, which turned into a sort of crochet-heavy coral reef. Wild times for this normally aphantasic human.

Damn, they may be delightfully trans-inclusive, but the booking system for the ladies’ pond is so utterly neurodivergence-unfriendly I might cry.

My neighbor told me a cat keeps eating his british prime minister so I asked how many PMs he has and he said he just goes to the commons and gets a new PM afterwards so I said it sounds like he's just feeding PMs to a cat and then his daughter started crying.

I linked to a piece on the EHRC fuckery, and then took my post down. Not because I agree with the gender critical person who toddled along in response to tell me what real women think, but because the author used an ableist slur in a subsequent piece. Do better, lefty think-piece guys.

Waking up the day after the solstice, mid-heatwave, thinking “it’s all downhill to the cold”.

Crumbs. It is not often I enjoy writing as much as I have been enjoying Francis Spufford’s.

Things have been so dark for so long that waking up early to find the US having a scaffolding watch party is a balm for the soul.

The year is 2028. The scaffolding is so dense, it's opaque. No one knows if the Kennedy Center is still inside there or not.

I *really* hope this works

This made me so happy this morning. If you‘ve ever had a loved one in long-term ICU care, you’ll know this is world-changing. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Not only does this crap rely on egregiously violating individual privacy, it’s also completely incoherent: it will bias the pay gap statistics (trans women get paid *way less* than cis women) and might also potentially even fuck up equal pay claims

Just had a cathartic roar at a couple of GBeebies reporters after they shoved my 15 year old at a protest, so may turn up on telly later as the face of the angry left.

What the government is doing to trans people is a society-wide version of Section 28. It is a level of bureaucratic cruelty that utterly decimates a whole group of people’s rights and puts anyone who doesn’t ‘look’ right in the eyes of others under constant surveillance. It’s a horrific thing.

Women, if you don't want to be harassed in the loos, please stand with your trans sisters, and with non-binary and intersex folk, and with over 100,000 other women, and sign the Not In Our Name - NION Women petition. notinourname.org.uk

Currently on the Victoria Line and for once not feeling in any way intimidated by the football crowd. Big, uncomplicated male joy. Strangers hugging. Someone should tell them the women’s game feels like this all the time.

Just a little PSA- Neil Gaiman has reactivated his Bluesky account. Because he deactivated before a lot of people could unfollow him, and/or because Bluesky doesn’t remove you from a person’s followers when you block them, a LOT of you are still publicly listed as following him. You should check.

Grief is not linear. Tonight I saw Emmylou Harris for the first time since Sheila died and almost certainly for the last time ever, and I am hollow with it.

Wise Children The Left Hand of Darkness Woman on the Edge of Time

Youngest and I have just engaged in pleasing speculation about whether naming more than two Mitford sisters in Mambo No. 5 would have fundamentally changed the character of the song.

I’ve got a set of tansu stairs up to my bed, which my short king of a dog climbs laboriously. We have a new dog, who seems to have decided that her challenge is to use as few of the steps as possible. It is not restful to wake up to 13kg of bully lurcher parkouring herself into your bed.

In six months, my firstborn will have left home. Smallest child and I shared a horrifying realisation last night that he’s the only thing that stops us going fully eccentric. For somewhat related reasons, the menagerie may also be expanding. It may be time to finally watch Grey Gardens.

I have enjoyed the discourse about how large a beast we could all wrangle in a bookshop @londonreviewbookshop.co.uk and wish to offer my own pedigree. I went to a school that had its own farm. We had many beasts upon it, ranging in size from quail to horse, & a certain percentage escaped every year.

Someone last night in the Trans Voices choir at Transmission had a pair of voluminous, intricate olive green trousers that made them look like a lightly militarised Mr Tumnus and I have never wanted a garment more. If anyone knows where they came from, let me know.

Horrifying realisation that in London you’re never more than 9m from Maya Forstater.

Trying to work out whether the School Wars are sufficiently alarming that the youngest needs to skip her evening lesson for fear of being shivved on the bus. Not helped by the bit of my brain (Shatner’s Bassoon?) that thinks this whole scare is basically the Brass Eye drugs episode.

In “unwillingly saved from myself” news, the new vegan Babybel are fucking disgusting. The old ones walked the uncanny valley between Babybel and La Vache Qui Rit and I was obsessed. These are inedible.

I’m enormously angry and sad that media concern trolling about trans kids is predicated on the idea that being trans is a worse outcome than being cis. That there’s a hierarchy of good and bad types of human and a moral and legal duty to preserve It. It’s such an old, cruel, untrue playbook.

A less transphobic press might start asking "How does driving a doctor out of Scotland help cut NHS wait times? Why is Scotland better with fewer doctors? Which other minority staff would you get rid of?"

God, I am so happy about this.

Did a gig with the band at the weekend and sang a song I wrote about loss. Feeling weirdly cross that I waited until my forties to allow myself to want this. And cross that it still feels like gross self-indulgence, particularly in the emergent fascist hellscape. Glad it happened though.

@williamabooth.bsky.social, think you could train Astrid up?

I’m high as balls on tattoo endorphins, and have just described myself to my girlfriend as wearing Roy Orbison levels of cling film so now I’m off to check what remains of the early 2000s internet. Neuticles, here I come.

I think it's a bad sign that every major news media outlet has spent days asking whether or not murder is bad and how much child porn is an okay amount

I once said “Hi X” to Will Young in a queue at Spitalfields Market (in my defence, X did look enough like Will Young that his nickname was Fat Will Young). I also once failed to recognise Ed Sheeran in my front garden and chatted at length his pal (my neighbour) about the recent change in bin day.

Crisis: i’ve run out of podcasts. Recommendations? Not true crime, but I enjoy a wide range of things currently, mostly history-related but also left-leaning chat nonsense. Funny and/or smart!

I had three hours of sleep last night and just described macrame as ”basically vanilla shibari” in a committee meeting. No filter Ush is a wild ride.

My kid and I watched a terrible French film with werewolf content (Family Pack) to help her with her French for GCSE. She has just suggested that a sequel would have to be called Family Pack 2: Electric Loup Garou, and I think my work here is done.

God, just seen a chap who had his wife’s last words to him tattooed on his leg and am wondering whether having “Stop nagging, Ush” etched on the back of my hand would improve my life. To be clear, I was trying to stop her accidentally injuring herself, and would nag again.

My partner recently moved into a boat and discovered that firewood can be obtained from Log Man John. This has led to intense speculation about the powerful Man-John family’s grip on modern life. Neither of us has yet dared enquire after his (presumed) brother, Scat.

Got kettled tonight for the first time in ages. Really scary clash between police and protesters at one point.

Celebrating three years of very uncomplicated joy and companionship today. It’s been sweet and hot and very funny. Long may it last.

Yes, *this is the moment* in history to start watering down legal protections against hate speech. Incredible.

This, from the Quakers, is worth reading. It's a serene, confident, utter rebuke of the hate and fear that's peddled by Sex Matters. The last two pages are smokin'. If you're on the wrong side of the Quakers, you really need to sit down and have a good chat with yourself.

I sometimes worry that if I were to ever transition, I would look like JD Vance.

Ten years sans booze today. Not uncoincidentally, it would also have been S’s 60th. The last few weeks have been very full of her, somehow.

Sunday Independent...

I just told my mum that Tom Lehrer had died, aged 97, and she responded “taken too soon”. I’m inclined to agree.

I will not support any UK party in 2025 that does not explicitly state its support for the rights of transgender people. This party does not yet meet this criterion.

I have just eaten two perfectly ripe plums from the fridge and have concluded that William Carlos Williams can not be held responsible for his crimes. they were delicious so sweet and so cold