Went out to find a sandwich Found an open bookshop Spent £48 on books Meh, it is Christmas

Excellent present from my brother Glow in the dark too! Gonna party like it’s 1999

@nutedawn.bsky.social Thought you’d enjoy this splendid Christmas gift I got..

Mr Tumnus having a book called ‘Is Man a Myth?’ on his shelf made me laugh as a kid and still amuses me now

Passed a charity stall selling pigs in blankets..

A Simpsons nativity graces the bookshelves

And 24th and finally - it’s Kodos dressed as Father Kristmas

Finished wrapping before about 11pm on Christmas Eve and feel it might be the achievement of the year..

Day 23 Christmas Eve Eve is a Kristmassy Kang or Kodos

Day 22 is one of my favourites so far - Bart’s pathetic attempt at a snowman of himself using the snow left under the car

Day 20 is retro - one of the Happy Little Elves

Day 15 is a cardboardbread/ gingerbread Marge and Maggie

Day 17 is…exactly the same - another Power Plant cooling tower ‘I’m seeing double here! Four towers!’

The general failure - among politicians and media - to push back against this stuff is reprehensible.

Day 14 is another legend - Santa’s Little Helper

Day 13 is a goodun - Grandpa (Fashioned in plastic as was the fashion at the time)

‘Why not eat your Christmas dinner at your desk this year? That way no valuable work hours will be lost to your employer!’

Day 11 is a small piece of cardboard (Reminding me of Bart’s $350 limited edition Itchy and Scratchy animation cel)

Day 7 is Snowball I complete with tyre marks. Too soon?

Day 6 is the man himself - Homer! ‘There’s only one fat guy who brings us presents and his name ain’t Santa’

It’s the most wonderful time of the year - a glorious round up of the best rip-off Christmas Laplands scandals from The Guardian www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Day 5 is Bart as a Happy Little Elf (Elf Barto?)

This year’s overpriced advent calendar is….The Simpsons (How could you Krusty?! I’d never lend my name to an inferior product)

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

A few years ago Prunella Scales sent out Christmas cards to people who donated to one of the many charity projects she and Timothy West supported - obviously I kept it and just dug it out (I enjoy the repeated amendments to make certain people knew who they were from)

Love a special offer

Always a sight to see

“I’ll declare war on you if you don’t give me the peace prize” is an incredible bit

As Les Miserables celebrates it’s 40th anniversary 😮 here’s a great 1985 promotional flyer I found. It’s overshot it’s closing date a little…

truly one of the most unintentionally funny things i've ever seen someone post online about themself

Claimed earlier that with enough support I’d be able to reach the summit of Everest and was rightly relentlessly mocked by colleagues. How hard can it be…?

New favourite notebook unlocked. 📘✍️

Ruefully concluded I couldn’t get anything in the Times quiz before realising I was trying to solve the answers..

Seaside scenes

I once read a National Trust leaflet on walking with wildlife which I swear to god contained the line "if approached by cows, don't keep close to your dog. instead let them off the lead and arrange a rendezvous point where you can meet"

Andrew Neil got 1.7 million views just asking questions about whether this bonkers conspiracy theory was true. When given the answers, he got 200k views for noting it was 'Twitter bollocks peddled by numpties'. He then took credit for 'discrediting' the conspiracy, not amplifying it!

Musket balls from the battlefield of Sedgemoor found last year (!) Presumably they weren’t buried spelling out Monmouth’s slogan

Still finding the ‘Private School fees mean we can’t afford five holidays a year’ story hilarious. The fact that the parents were supposedly called Alex and Alexandra with their children Ali, Harry, and Barry…

Brought some special Narnia stamps entirely because I love the classic Pauline Baynes illustrations which came with them..

The reader of the audiobook I'm listening to has a number of eccentricities, one of which is not knowing what Roman numerals are and reading them out as collections of letters

very cool that for ten years people at the heights of political commentary insisted to the point of rage that the paramount threat to free speech was “censorious” college students

Various visions of Falstaff

My review of Hamlet Hail to the Thief is here: www.northernsoul.me.uk/hamlet-thief... I can’t stress this enough: you have to go and see this production, it’s a masterpiece @the-rsc.bsky.social #hamlethailtothethief

Titus Andronicus Complete with gutter and splash guard for blood? 😬🩸

Stained glass of Holy Trinity glowing splendidly in the sun

First visitors of the day to New Place gardens 💚

Coffee Tudor style in Stratford

I love this* by my old colleague @lexytopping.bsky.social on the journalist who had a curiously successful run of interviews with Tom Cruise, Barack Obama, and George Clooney for tiny regional UK publications. *If you read it you can imagine the legals on it. www.theguardian.com/media/ng-int...

Happy Easter friends

Deep down I know there’s no such holiday as Good Saturday yet I continue to faithfully observe it