I’m sad to hear the news that the wonderful Jane Goodall is no longer in the world. Her work with chimpanzees at Gombe in Tanzania taught us to look at other apes - and ourselves - differently. I was privileged to meet her later in life and tell her what an inspiration she was to me.

Don't get mad: I'm going to port something work-related from LinkedIn over here. 1. Would you design your website, app or documentation differently if you knew the person using it would be feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by life? Or do you think those users are 'edge cases'?

The stories of enslaved African people and more than 1,000 British plantation owners who were compensated after abolition have been brought together in a searchable archive for the first time. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Dinosaurs going cheap (and “rawr!” obviously). Also, for those of you in the US there has been a lot of confusion about tariffs recently. My books are tariff-free, and cost the same now, as they always did! So grab yourself some dinosaurs here: dragonsofwales.etsy.com/listing/1689...

No. For even if the government cannot recover all its damages and costs here, this case is still a signal to current and potential suppliers that it is willing to enforce it contractual rights. And that is very valuable. Many government suppliers do not believe the government will ever do this.

The earliest record of an English eel-rent is from 8th C. Wessex. The annual rent for 10 hides of land (c. 300 acres) in King Ine's territory included: - 10 vats of honey - 300 loaves - 32 ambers of ale - 2 cows - 10 geese - 20 hens - 10 cheeses - 1 amber of butter - 100 eels 🗃️🧪

"Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, We have had our summer evenings, now for #October eves!" By Humbert Wolfe #October1st #BookChatWeekly #Autumn 🎃🍃🍂 🖼️ 'La Bourrasque' (The Gust of Wind) by Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer, 1896

Malham cove was looking majestic in the mist, confiding Dipper on the beck, (phonepic). #birds

London Day 4: The Edwardians at the King's Gallery (which was the Queen's Gallery last time I visited). This show didn't improve my opinion of the Edwardians (so many knickknacks! so much colonialism!) but the frocks were nice. This is Queen Alexandra's 1871 Mary Queen of Scots fancy dress costume:

Abigail's lichen series is my favourite... www.abigailbrown.co.uk

Abigail Brown - her work is stunning!

I'm going to write a blog about today, I think, but in the meantime... the cats, bling and stupendous opulence that is Goldsmiths' Hall in London...

does this mean all those labour MPs who lost the whip for voting against the cap will get the whip back? 🦗🦗🦗🦗

But the PM won't join us on Bluesky.

2 years ago I worked on a project to restore a 1920s WHS railway station bookstall. It was in pieces & in a bad state. A colleague & I found old photos of it in the WHS archive at @themerl.bsky.social which helped the restoration work. Look at it now👇 Full story www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

The witch knows the turn of year through the sweet tang of apple rot carpet. She knows it in the slow striptease of hawthorn, knows it the wrinkling skin of berries. She requires no calendar but nature. Each season is sacred. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

More good news!

Volunteers help to cut back wildflower areas ready for regrowth next year, at the Deneway nature reserve in Brighton. Amazing how much a few willing hands can get done! 📷 Archie Taplin

better tones. Colouring now. Witch incoming about noon. My season, now.

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

This is one of those judgments that when you start reading it, you keep reading it. So finely written, so sharp, so devastating. But the use of that postcard at the beginning is a masterstroke. This is a judgment for the ages.

Sooo…little announcement…I’m starting to paint towards my first solo exhibition! It’s not until the spring, but I’m already equally excited/panicked. Had several doubting-myself melt downs just thinking about it, but I’m starting to get going with work now and will share sneak peeks as I have them ☺️

We forget, also, quite how difficult it would have been (for most people) and how much time and effort it would have taken in a pre-internet age to have acquired and learned lyrics and music for the Horst Wesel Lied et al… that would have required some dedication to task.

honestly the light at this time of the year on @nhm-london.bsky.social is unbeatable 🥲

Wes Streeting has claimed the NHS is on it’s last thread but why is he pulling it But punching down on the most productive part of the NHS with 1.4m appts a day & 20% more delivered than 2019 Refusing to listen to GPs that have delivered, instead calling them laggards & behind the times

so at one level these definitions are fine I guess, but my objection is that they're too philosophical, two exactly identical systems can be capitalist or socialist depending on whether the guy in charge believes in a future hypothetical communism bsky.app/profile/jack...

Elaborating a bit on this, in tutor England you find "join stock companies" which sounds a lot like modern corporations, but when you look it's like 3 investors. The Dutch East India company did something different, they tried to spread shares over as many owners as possible bsky.app/profile/hype...

Very sorry to hear of Brian Patten's death. He was the first contemporary poet I can remember reading and the magical clarity and simplicity of his voice was a revelation. Rest in Poetry.

Gavrinis is the most amazing megalithic site I have been privileged to visit. Taking a boat to reach, you encounter a remarkable concentration of #Neolithic rock art at a single megalithic monument. A deeply powerful & inspiring place. @megalithic.bsky.social #rockart #archaeology #TombTuesday

Also tonight. A pair of Daubenton’s bats, hunting midges just above the surface of the river.

Corndon Hill 8: Close to Mitchell's Fold stone circle, this is one of many cairns upon the summit of Corndon Hill. This one is easily visible from the bottom of the hill - a beautiful place to sit and take in the view. Lots more photos on our page. 📷 Humbucker More: http://www.megalithi...

Wedding boots https://botfrens.com/collections/223/contents/100162

One-in-ten adults on low-to-middle incomes are now carers. This has widened the gap between lower and higher income families when it comes to caring responsibilities.

Finally!

Doing Putin’s bidding? That is Trump’s America, don’t let it become Farage’s Britain. We need a new inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee into Reform and Farage's links to Russia.

Hermitage Castle in the Scottish border region is one of Britain's most sinister sites, in part because Lord William de Soulis let his familiar Robin Redcap hunt for victims nearby, driving the land to ruin until de Soulis' death. Who controls the redcap now? #FairyTaleTuesday

Suit https://botfrens.com/collections/223/contents/95466

I got shortlisted for Verve's Poem of the Month! The Poem can be read here alongside the winner and other shortlistees! vervepoetry.substack.com/p/september-...

Feckin' slugs! youtu.be/lYZaolh_TOc

The apartment below mine had the only balcony of the house. I saw a girl standing on it, completely submerged in the pool of autumn twilight. She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together. ― J.D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew

US photographer Margaret Bourke-White on top of the Chrysler Building, New York, 1931 #womensart

Timeline cleans🦋

The tiniest common blue on Bryher, Scilly yesterday

I am on ILR. Labour's policies will make ILR much harder to obtain. Granting ILR to immigrants after ten consecutive years on a qualifying visa instead of current five, while also requiring they spend time volunteering is completely hare-brained. This will be a long 🧵

It’s book publication day for #GhostsoftheFarm! It’s been a lifetime’s companionable & instructional haunting, & I’m thrilled to bring these women from out the shadows, honour them & raise & address my own rural ghosts. Love & thanks to @chelseagreenbooks.bsky.social & my early readers too x

Yesterday went for a walk cos I was out of sorts. At Canary Wharf, I saw a tiny Pied Wagtail nonchalantly sat at the base of the deck steps eating crumbs. All around him, people doing. Walking. Being. Unaware. Except the one woman, sat, enthralled with him at her feet. Looking down adoringly. Gawj

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

Every conservative legal scholar is like "there's actually a long legal literature about this if you would just give me a minute to finish writing it"