Today is Epiphany, when Western Christianity celebrates the three kings' visit to the infant Christ. Peter Bruegel the Elder's 'Adoration of the Kings' [National Gallery] is one of my favourite imaginings of that moment. It's also full of mystery. Quick Epiphany 🧵

I am listening to Radio 4, where an American commentator is being interviewed. Talk has turned to Greenland. “We don’t have enough ice-breakers,” he says. I find myself, if only fleetingly, wondering why he can’t just ask everyone to say what their favourite colour is and sing something.

It’s almost as if FIFA isn’t best equipped to judge.

I used to think that Trump was a stupid, narcissistic, attention-seeking psychopath, but I take it all back. He's much worse than that.

NY Resolutions: Aged 18: Become a better person and work towards world peace. Aged 32: Lose four stone and write a novel. Aged 50: Label things properly in the freezer. Aged 66: Try not to talk to myself in public loudly enough for other people to hear.

Watching Carols From Kings I noticed the Dean prayed for the joy of Christmas to illuminate arseholes, which I thought was lovely, as I think arseholes are often a forgotten demographic.

Today I am a little concerned that I might have made too much ice-cream in too many different flavours. Ha, ha, ha! Gotcha! That’s impossible, isn’t it, because there is no such thing as too much ice cream!

It’s a sad indictment of Britain’s ignorance of nature that Sycamore Gap petitions - for a tree that mattered to humans but not nature - received tens of thousands of signatures but a petition to protect entire peatland habitats is stuck at 1,500 actnow.peatfreepartnership.org.uk/end-peat-sal...

I’ve posted this before but the light was perfect today- a little Victorian cat paw in a brick at the front of the old Norfolk & Norwich Hospital. As this is on the front-facing corner of the main gates, the bricklayer quite clearly put it there on purpose, at a height where children would spot it.

Tommy Robinson is a Christian in the same way I’m a nuclear physicist.

Aldi have an English sparking wine from Kent on offer at £7 something and it is very nice. I have been testing it for you, which is very selfless of me, isn’t it.

I have been extolling the virtues of my lovely wool mattress and suggesting my friends stay over and ‘test the mattress’. I am aware that this phrase has different meanings, depending on one’s age. 20: we all know exactly what it means. 40: will I sleep well? 60: what about my back?!

Found when sorting an old drive. I still, very occasionally, say 'not many badgers in the House of Lords' and this is why:

What other honours await, one wonders. The PGA Prize for Physics? The Major League Basketball Prize for Literature?

⚠️ Stand-off in Sheringham: Local campaigners have spent the past three nights camping out overnight in an extraordinary bid to save a 1950s Streamline Moderne style bus shelter in Norfolk, thwarting council contractors who attempted to demolish the structure at 2am. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It is, I am reliably informed, International Red Squirrels week. And it’s working. I am aware of red squirrels.

Fed up with the John Lewis's website talking to me as if I'm a naughty dog.

Claire's beloved horse Tango died in terror when holiday-makers set off a firework display at a nearby cottage. Sign her petition to protect animals and vulnerable people from the shock and terror of unexpected explosions. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/ba...

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Before we get started, here’s a little ice-breaker.’

The sun expends on a fine summer’s day an average of one horsepower on every 30 square feet of the earth’s surface in this latitude, or 1450 horse-power per acre. This great gift of energy is neither utilised nor stored by man at present.

I bought one of those self-assembly bird tables a while back. The lazy bastards haven't even opened the box, all they've done is shit on it.

You see, the thing I find so baffling and impossible to believe about this whole affair of Farage’s house is that, apparently, he has a girlfriend. Mind blowing.

IKEA do these rather nice cardboard boxes for cats and they will deliver. Jack’s came with some free magazine files for me to organise sheet music, which I thought was a nice touch.

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet. After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

MOST interesting: the bronze of the Lion of Venice was sampled by Padua Uni last year- and lead isotopes show it's Chinese, Yangtze River basin, probably a Tang dynasty 'zhènmùshòu' horned tomb guardian of more upright stature, c.600-900. Possibly imported by Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, then modified.

Come and hear me sing songs of women’s experience of the sea at Weelsby Hall, Grimsby, as part of the Heritage Open Days. www.linkage.org.uk/wh-hod-2025/

Come and hear me sing songs of women’s experience of the sea at Weelsby Hall, Grimsby, as part of the Heritage Open Days. www.linkage.org.uk/wh-hod-2025/

I might buy a lottery ticket this week… www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

I just misread the term ‘counter-terror’ police as ‘counter-tenor’ police, which conjured an interesting soundscape…

Hello church crawling people. St. Peter’s Church, Clayworth in Nottinghamshire has some very striking murals by Pheobe Traquair, which dominate the church. The funny thing is that Pevsner doesn’t mention them at all. Does anyone know why he didn’t?

This whole heat thing is relative, though, isn't it. A pupil of mine is going to India. She was already worrying about the heat and then she had an email from her aunt: 'Do bring warm clothes. It'll be the monsoon season and it can get very cold. Sometimes it's only 30 degrees'.

Everyone loves sausage dogs, but are you familiar with the other sausage animals? Here's a handy guide. If you like this cartoon, I can draw one for you. www.worldofmoose.com/products/sau...

A list of the ten most difficult words to say aloud… 10. Specificity 9. Ignominious 8. Statistics 7. Defibrillator 6. Magnanimity 5. Pulchritude 4. Worcestershire 3. Anaesthetist 2. Asterisk 1. Sorry* * Seems to be the hardest word

I was at Southwark Cathedral the other day and it was an honour to meet Hodge, the resident cat.

Some creep on here crept into my messages, with ‘Hi, how are you doing?’. I blocked him, of course, but I have to say that, before doing so, I couldn’t resist replying with, ‘Doing what?’.

Has anyone else noticed this new thing of ‘two times’ for twice. Now, I do know language evolves and all that, but I’m a bit baffled that two words would replace one. Any thoughts?

A little word of advice: do not use the term ‘a lick and a promise’ to anyone under about forty…

I’ve just had an advert pop up for a ‘merino base layer.’ That’s a woolly vest, isn’t it?

www.change.org/p/boycott-th...

www.change.org/p/boycott-th...

Social reformer Josephine Butler (b.1828 Northumberland), arguably most effective campaigner for women’s rights of her time, died on this day 1906. She ended coverture (whereby woman’s legal rights were subsumed by her husband’s), criminalised child prostitution and human trafficking.

Turns out that chopped up cold Yorkshire puddings make rather super croutons for beef soup. Who knew, eh? Follow me for more slightly eccentric kitchen tips.

Kate’s Christmas Day roast potato ready reckoner: Multiply the number of people by the three potatoes they will eat. Multiply by two. Add half a dozen potatoes for luck. Multiply total by three.

Adopt a Snow Leopard? That’s all very well, but where will it go? And I don’t think Jack will be happy. I’m not sure the World Wrestling Federation has thought this through, to be honest.

I follow a dressmaking page over on Facebook. Someone was asking if anyone knew anything about ‘antique Singers’ and I took it bit personally until I realised what they meant…

I’m just getting ready for a day in the recording studio and what a treat it is to be looking forward to a day’s performing without having to give a second thought to what I’m wearing or what I look like!

There is a very exciting chance that new technology will allow us to read charred papyri from a vast library excavated in Herculaneum. Here are the lost ancient texts I would love to recover (please add your own wish list): 🧵⬇️

M’gentleman friends taking up art.

This Carmelite nunnery is up for sale. I might do the lottery this week and, if I win, buy it to host music-making ‘retreats’ for people. There are some wonderful performance/rehearsal/ceilidh spaces. I can dream, can’t I… www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for...