After 5 hours of trying to make myself heard a wedding reception yesterday (the DJ thought we were there for his benefit) this morning I sound like Florence Pugh.

It's a shame that the words "harm" and '"offence" occur in the same paragraph of broadcast guidelines for the BBC. Very different things...

I noticed that the two occasions when Jimmy Kimmel teared up while delivering his "I'm back' monologue were when he mentioned Erica Kirk. I wonder if he had spoken to her or asked to speak to her?

Was watching Michael Portillo's railway programme this morning and he was attempting to steer a Suffolk Punch horse. In order to get it to turn right he had to say... "wheesht". I've only heard that word in the Scots/Irish sense of "be quiet" before. Odd how languages develop separately.

Regular readers will know that this is a bit of a hobby-horse of mine. Applies to campaigning groups too. This is from the Radio Times. The interviewee is Elliot Ackerman. Always good to find a fellow feeler (behave!).

"How dare Mumsnet (that bastion of thousands of people airing their honest opinions without fear or favour) have any input to social policy!".

Good morning from Exmoor 💛 A few favourites from yesterday’s gathering of Tippbarlake Exmoor Pony Herd. Photos by Sarah Hailstone.

I do wish some guerrilla gardeners would shin up a few flagposts and cable tie some hanging baskets on them. Featuring, of course, some flags .... of the potted variety.

Have high hopes that, merely with the addition of a scarf, this "I would wear it to the office" dress will do for a wedding later today.

We love to see it... (No particular shade to Nicolas Sarkozy. I have no idea what he's been up to, but the principle's a good one...).

I would love to hear on Radio 4's Niche Finders (a spin-offs of You and Yours) an entrepreneur who has come up with a car that is equivalent to the Nokia brick. I'd certainly buy one (and so would anyone else who doesn't want to spend £100 every time a light comes on on their electronic dashboard).

Not particularly proud of it but I have just been VERY SARCASTIC with a digital assistant.

The Newsreader ( @bbciplayer.bsky.social ) doesn't do visual humour much but there was a lovely moment at a wedding in episode 5 where someone came up to a row of guests and said "don't all turn around at once but..." at which point everybody did ....to a man.

I'm thinking that if I listen to enough #TheArchers I could probably ace an MBA.

The actor who plays Ruairdhi is completely unrecognisable (in his voice) from when he played Shardlake. Well done Arthur Hughes! #TheArchers

In my one-woman campaign to #MakeShameGreatAgain I have put up a notice in my car, visible to every car driving by, saying "big white saloon, it's not too late to let me have your insurance details".

Well I never knew #WednesdayWallPaintings was a thing... Here's my effort from Ickleton, Essex (12thC) (uncovered by a fire 46 years ago).

If Martin Lewis was a US citizen, oh my goodness how Donald Trump would hate him: "A loser, unAmerican" (UnAmerican to save consumers money, to the detriment of huge businesses) #r4today

Don't remember all of this national coverage when Holyhead was shut down for weeks earlier this year #r4today

The ‘no checkout our AI will know what you’ve bought’ grocery experiment fails as Amazon closes all its remaining 19 shops bit.ly/4nc0vp2

The even more unbelievable crime fact (which I learned relatively recently) is that burglary has fallen by more than 90% since the 1990s. Did anyone notice? Nope. Does anyone believe it? Nope. But is is true? It is!

Listening to In Touch. Sounds like the Macular Society is going the way of the Samaritans. Centralising things. And with about as much enthusiasm from staff and volunteers too.

Fair to say that this Radio 4 programme, whatever its intent, isn't going to do a lot for hotel-housed migrant/local community relations.

BREAKING: US Representative MTG introduces amendment to cut $500 million for Israel’s military. “The US already provides Israel with $3.8 billion annually. They have universal healthcare and subsidized college. Meanwhile, America is $37 trillion in debt.”

Pip and Stella remind me of a couple I remember seeing on a channel 4 documentary once. They had two children and each parent was .... responsible for one. #TheArchers

Adam speaks all of his lines as if they're the last line of the episode #TheArchers

There's a rather odd & comical scene at the beginning of the film Limbo (about asylum seekers living on a remote Scottish island) of a man and woman, presumably employed by the Home Office, acting out a scene of good sexual manners. Perhaps, rather than being odd & comical, it's a sensible idea.

There's now a distinct possibility that I may have dealt with all of my emails from the last fortnight off by the time I finish my working week at lunchtime tomorrow. Go me.

Brian and Justin in today's episode remind me of those two old bickering ladies in Cider with Rosie... When one dies the other will only survive for another couple of weeks. #TheArchers

The problem with using AI for writing day-to-day reports is that some poor bugger has to read them. Today that poor bugger is me. When we had to think about it ourselves three sentences would do. Now a computer is thinking about it, 20 is better.

I wonder when we'll get to the point (we probably already have) of an employer suggesting to a home-working employee that they should move house as their current environment isn't that conducive to homeworking (said with the sound of a pneumatic drill vibrating through my brain).

Oh my goodness, Woman's Hour are talking about menopause-related motorway-driving panic attacks. Wonderful! About time....

So sad that Shardlake wasn't taken up for any further series. Really enjoyed the 4 episode series (based on book one - Dissolution) that was made. Lovely performance from Arthur Hughes I thought - even if the writing did make Shardlake a little harsher in character than I'd imagined him to be.

I'm so here for this Mary Beard episode. Especially the fact that she knows her family had a dog when she was a child, but she can't remember its name and isn't sure whether it was still alive when they moved house podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

On X I used data to show London does not have the highest crime rate in the world. 10 mins later a right winger linked to my book. 10 mins after that I got 40 1-star reviews from unverified accounts (previously 4.9 star avg). Fair play to Amazon - they removed them all. But that's how it works.

The arrangement of my washed-up cooking implements seems to be outing me as a rower.

I have made the mistake of going into the garden to pull out the (now hated) geums without putting on a hazmat suit first.

Haven't listened to Gyles Brandreth's Rosebud podcast for a while. On this morning's one (with Alan Davies) G expressed audible surprise at Alan saying he only had a once-a-week bath as a child in the late 60s/early 70s. Didn't everyone? Get with the programme Gyles...

There's a children's film called The Last Load on Talking Pictures at the moment. And, if nothing else, it proves that the Repair Cafe is not a modern idea....

I'm hanging up my laundry on a tall criss-cross dryer and a plimsole sock has just fallen from the top row to the bottom twisting round bars as it goes. The Olga Korbut of sockage.

I'm watching #Shardlake tonight. (I really can't get me enough Ruairdhi #TheArchers ). Cromwell has got Matthew involved with the dissolution of the monasteries. Cromwell really was the Elon Musk at DOGE of his day...

There's not a trace of camp left in Paul is there? #TheArchers

Bit of an unfortunate juxtaposition of closing headline and programme trailer just now on Radio 4...

Out of me and my car, I'm starting to wonder which is the tail and which is the dog.

522,000 children starved to death in Sudan since April 2023

I should really have said that the sculptor of the Great Bardfield artists is Ian Wolter and it sits just outside the Fry Gallery. It's wonderful and conveys the sense of community between those artists.

Just finishing Tombland (Kett's Rebellion) and now watching Peterloo and it strikes me that... drum roll please...huge income inequality is a bit of a recipe for.... social unrest.

Day trip cont.: Wall paintings at Ickleton church. A Madonna of the Lily by Allan Howse at Elmdon church and the sign for the former library at Elmdon, now the village hall.

A beautiful church (St Mary Magdalene) in Saffron Walden too. Couldn't get a complete look around tho as there was a wedding rehearsal going on (so young!). Did see the name of a long-ago rector called Tychmerch though. Wonder if he's any relation to Alan?

Saffron Walden has no lack of varied Blue Plaques. I've already posted Edward Bawden, but they also have (excitingly) Jack Cardiff & (less excitingly) Henry Winstanley. Perhaps fittingly, the house that JC's sits on looks like a one-dimensional frontage. But I assure you, there is a building behind.