Worn out road markings might have contributed to me being knocked off my bike earlier this year. My ancient bike was wrecked, along with my helmet and glasses. I suffered bumps, bruises and some minor inconvenience. Driver's insurance company paid out £25,000.

A big alder tree blew down in my local town centre last night. The contractors said I could "take it all". It was a lovely tree, especially valuable in its setting, but now it'll be made into lovely crafts by me and my spoon club friends.

Did a bit of "To Kill A Mockingbird" immersion the last two evenings. I read the book years ago and on Thursday evening saw the amazing Aaron Sorkin play at the Leeds Playhouse with my students. Last night I watched the film, for the first time, with my boy. It really is essential stuff.

New episode up! We talked with researcher Tim Gill about how we need to make our cities safe for children, not cars. "Children are basically living very captive and kind of contained lives, and that's just not healthy." podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

Covid exercise messaging left children stuck indoors, UK inquiry hears

I'm repurposing a tree house, that my kids no longer play in, into a "dad craft refuge" at the bottom of my garden. Using hand tools has been fun and rewarding*. *also a bit knackering.

Bradfordian here. Kruger is chatting tripe.

I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords.

It's OK if you're not OK. Football's not my thing but conversations like this have helped me. #MentalHealth

A rowan scoop. I'm enjoying these brighter milk paint colours. Marigold and Salem Red.

Finally caught up with this nasty piece of work and force of nature and humanity. Fantastic historical fiction with a fairly local-to-me resonance. Reminded me of Peter Carey's "True History of The Kelly Gang" which gets an HT in the acknowledgements.

Share your favourite cover versions: Don't Stop Moving - Beautiful South youtu.be/nGK2m2fw9Wg?...

If we must have 'pride' in a sense of being 'British' I'd much rather it was about village life, rolling landscapes, vibrant cities, a brilliant creative arts scene and a pretty successful multicultural society (despite all the negativity about immigration). Football hooligans don't speak for me.

I thought it was a good time to post these pics of the River Ribble, at Settle, from a week and a bit ago. I had a stroll along the bank and watched a dipper. It settled my nerves before giving a speech at the launch of Ingleborough into the King's Series of National Nature Reserves.

No pineapples in bronze age Britain so Hawaiians were off the menu. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

The summer holidays are over and cycle commuting in Bradford is once more rather a trying experience - beset by driver aggression, carelessness and criminality. Maybe time to remount the camera.

You join us live from Danny Dyer’s birthday drinks.

This story terrified me as a kid.

"My moments in Englishness that really inspire me are the fact that we were first people to recognise that no-one is above the law when we chopped off the head of King Charles, we had the first working class movement in the Chartists.. ..the founding of the welfare state.." youtu.be/Yqa9K8_8Q6c?...

Had another crack at kolrosing. It's a technique which challenges my patience but I think this passes the 6ft test.

Another two spoons fresh from the knife. An eating spoon in spalted sycamore and a beech teaspoon. I've bought some milk paint in brighter colours and I'm enjoying playing with them too.

And somehow it’s time for the first page of ‘What to Look for in Autumn’. Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

Posts full of typos tonight. Thanks for bearing with. I hope stuff got through. - Nature connection is vital. - Partnership is awesome. - Bigots can do one.

If British culture is diminished it's only due to it's abandonment and limiting of scope by small-minded bigots who fail to see its richness. The undermining only exists in their own heads. To me British culture is as vibrant as ever. If anything, enriched in its diversity.

Career goal attained. Interviewed for BBC Radio 4, Farming Today, today.

Big day for me today. Unaccustomed as I am, I'll be giving a speech at a prestigious launch event. Eek! #OutdoorLearning #NatureConnection #PeopleAndCommunities #WildIngleborough

Similar story of early onset of baldness here. I remember a few comments & I was a bit sad about not having options to explore fancy haircuts. The comments though, always seemed to reflect others' anxieties about their hair-dependent identity. It didn't bother me much. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Terrific. Pedestrian and cycle infrastructure "encroached upon" in Bradford this morning. This will almost certainly have been a "single vehicle collision". Those concrete blocks have been bulldozed 20m from where they should be, protecting the pavement. #BloodyCyclists

This looks like useful tech. I see loads of non-compliant and "dirty" plates, daily, around Bradford. Should be an instant "stop and seize" by the police. I don't understand the equivocation around drivers taking deliberate steps to avoid accountability.

To wish that our most beautiful and significant heritage landscapes still looked and felt at least something like these posters isn't so much nationalist nostalgia as recognition that capitalism, in the guise of progress, has enshitified so much that's valuable in our culture.

A couple of my most recent efforts. Long-handled sycamore eating spoons.

No. Siestas are the answer. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is my flag too. It represents an England for all who call it home.

Yesterday's bike ride really did me in. Tired by mid-afternoon today and still dehydrated. Definitely heat exhaustion. I'll be glad of some cooler weather for future bike rides.

50 gravelly kms, including the Sonder "Rombald's Ride" from Ilkley, in the heat left me a bit dizzy, a little nauseous & with thigh cramps. The ride home, "ovver t' tops" wouldn't have made me any happier so I let the train take the strain. Still, a good day on the bike. alpkit.com/pages/sonder...

Nationalism is by default unimaginative and paradoxically every example of it is broadly similar to other examples everywhere else in the world. It's always about flags and chants and xenophobic exceptionalism. The mantra of people who don't have the imagination to actually love where they live.

And this is why I wrote "A UK for ALL" on the budget nylon flags hung sloppily over my local by-pass. Today's flag drapers are really engaged in a sort of low energy pogrom.

1/5 A thread on the flag raising campaign: Flags do not symbolise any stable, inherent message. Their meaning is entirely contextual. Union Jacks along the Mall on state occasions or the St George’s Cross at an England football match are symbols of inclusivity. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Saw some union and St George's cross flags loosely attached to bridges on the M1 today. Limp, nylon jobs, hanging creased and wonkily. To treat symbols of national identity like this doesn't seem like patriotism to me and it makes me feel uneasy.

It's something of a failure in sentencing that, at this point, Connolly doesn't believe herself to have made a dangerously inciteful statement, based on abhorrent views around a false narrative (at a "powder-keg" moment) and determined to make amends. #PoliticalPrisonerMyArse

After enjoying, perhaps, the laziest holiday of my lifetime and far too much food and drink lately, I was a bit reticent about getting out on my bike tonight. However... It was a blast and I'm not quite the flabby, wheezing specimen I feared I'd turned into.

I've restored the "A Châlus" billhook, as well as it needs to be, to be a useful tool again. Some scrubbing with WD40 and wire wool has got the rust off and a tickle with sharpening stones has brought back the edge. Linseed oil on the handle. Normal use and maintenance will improve it further.

Something I noticed, on our French holiday, was the prevalence of low-key deterrents in places where pedestrians and motorists mix. Railings, bollards, curbs, textures, islands, planters, humps... forming chicanes and tight curves. Body-work/suspension damaging encouragments for drivers to behave.

The green-roofed shelter project, at work, has gone well while I've been on holiday. I'm looking forward to seeing it for real tomorrow. Great to work with Dan Watson Woodland Products on this scheme.

My experience too. By bike I'm liberated from concerns about where to store my big metal box on my way home and I'm free to make spontaneous purchases eg. of beer, cake and coffee.

Spark

And at each hostelry he'd call at, the tenant "landlord" would say, "I'm sorry sir, that's just gone off. Is Worthingtons OK" and he'd arrive in London thoroughly miserable.

Went to Brest today. 90% of its buildings obliterated after D-Day and its subsequent seige and battle for liberation. It's amazing though how it creates a sense of cultural identity and heritage around its maritime function.

Attention! Chien Bizarre. It's a cocker-bloody-poo. Isn't it.

We did beach today. I think the last time I did beach here, in Morgat, was over 40 years ago.