We just had a dessert that included a banana sorbet, which just tasted like that banana amoxycillin you used to get as a kid 😁

It might be my birthday, but fuck off, this is just stupid: www.bbc.com/news/article...

We need to do something about this. It's like someone's pressed the "bossa nova" button on a Yamaha keyboard and then didn't know when to stop with the breathy singing on top... And IT'S SPREADING

If he carries on like this it's going to make the FIFA Peace Prize look ridiculous

I regret to inform you all that awful bossa nova covers of popular tunes have spread to Austria

Great to see Enough’s harmed being called out more and more Police warn victims are being duped into buying self-swab rape kits www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

I'm not sure this line can ever be topped 😆

Allocate research funding by sortition. Then you can do the work of submitting a plan for what you'll do with the money, once you know you've got the money. And put the research office resources into post-award support. Oh, and increase base funding for research activities in HEIs.

The way M&S have integrated their stores into their online shopping, particularly for returns, really is excellent. I got something delivered this morning that didn't fit, dropped it off at our local store two hours ago, and my refund is now on its way 👍🏻

Time to watch The Far-Right Radicalisation of Young Rolf

One of the most interesting undergraduate dissertations I ever supervised was on the sociology of dog ownership, as I think one of the findings is related to this. The student found that owners who got pedigree dogs as puppies treated them as family-members, gave them birthday parties etc...

Was BBC1 Scotland about five seconds out there?...

Woke: Hootenanny Broke: BBC One's NYE party Bespoke:

I think my highlight of 2025 has been a Bradford City of Culture. I didn't go to half as much as I thought I would, but what we did do was amazing. The Railway Children on the KWVR was one of the best immersive theatre experiences of my life. But, what I really loved about it, in and amongst...

I read Wuthering Heights 😱 Necrophiliac or ghost wandering the moors?

There's something interesting here for me in how, after the New Urban Left of the early 80, but the late 80s/early 90s Labour Councils were at the vanguard of new style City Marketing and emerging urban Neo-Liberalism 🤔 Arguably, they were forced into it by Thatcher's earlier "reforms", but...

The rest, as they say, is history, and it has become a substantial industry in itself. The answer to the question "Why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay" is of course "because it deliberately set out to become it and spent a huge amount of public and private money in pursuit of that goal".

🙋Did you know that Edinburgh's "official" Hogmanay festivities are an ancient tradition dating back to the last century? 🎆 1993 to be precise. The event was dreamed up by Edinburgh Marketing and Unique Events Ltd. to "[package] Edinburgh more effectively" and thus "improve the visitor experience" 🧵👇

I've just done a thing I didn't believe when I saw it on here - post a postage paid envelope back to Reform UK to cost them money with no benefit to them whatsoever 😁

I accidentally did too much exercise yesterday, and I sat on the sofa about an hour ago to have a cup of tea, and I'm now beginning to worry I might never move again

Seeing this, and as it's betwixtmas, I've bothered to investigate something I'd wondered - with the ending of peak time train fares in Scotland, is it now cheaper for me to bike-train to work than drive? (commute - north Edinburgh to Stirling). I'm working on an assumption I'm on campus average...

Just noticed that I now spell it "pendantic" without thinking...

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

What a truly bizarre story. Do you think they spent an hour tickling him while he held his breath? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

We're having our post Christmas bubble and squeak tonight 😋🤤

We've almost gone from terminus to terminus on a Lothian Bus today. I'm almost tempted to stay on to the very end just now just to say I've done it (for the first time of living in Edinburgh for over 20 years!) even though it will involve a 15 minute walk home...

Dear Roy, Before Christmas you had a Wheelie Bin pinched. I have just had a Satellite Dish taken from my garden. I used this as a Parabolic Reflector for recording Birdsong. So if anyone sees this at a car boot sale, be careful as it may be Radioactive.

I feel we are the only gays in the world who have not watched Heated Rivalry...

The War Between Land and Sea suddenly got Very Good in the final two episodes. Very glad we stuck with it 😊

Watching World's Strongest Man. Christmas is truly complete 😊

I posted about convenience food on BlueSky 15 minutes ago and I STILL don't have anyone in my mentions telling me just to make my own 😱

The Guardian have devoted an entire double-page spread to "open the packet and pop it in the oven for 10 minutes"

My mum is getting the annual use of the jacuzzi. It came with our flat and is the least practical bathing device ever.

Yet again, I find myself pondering how the appalling state of road signage in the country really is emblematic of 20 years of declining investment in the basic public infrastructure of the country

I don't recall radio 2's playlist being quite so relentlessly Christmassy in previous years? We're on a wee road trip and have had to tune into another station as I think if I hear Mariah Carey one more time I'll explode

Kings Speech discourse is now reminding me of my mum's story of visiting Sandringham and spotting the Daily Hate Mail and a half-finished misogynistic cross-stitch (with a grammatical error) in one of the living rooms...

I was very disappointed that the Today-style challenging interview with Dyson didn't ask why his hand dryers are so astoundingly shite

After the twelftieth time of my mum asking why Strictly is on, I've written "it's the Christmas special" on a bit of paper and given it to her 🙄😤🫤 And amazingly she definitely doesn't have dementia. It's just how she is...

Watching #Strictly and realising I forgot to buy Bangs of Expectation to go with Christmas dinner 😞

I'm very glad the Christmas raki tasted as nice with the Christmas pudding as it did when we bought it, slightly pissed, at the raki distillery in Crete 😋

Well, my mum is quietly sat in the corner, wearing her new dressing gown, reading @cathamclarke.bsky.social 's History of England in 25 Poems. I think the Christmas presents are a success. And we shall get some peace....

And to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, and will return in Avengers: Doomsday

I almost just had a "remember when we spent Christmas in A&E having your finger reattached?" moment preparing the parsnips for tomorrow 🫤

Listening to Nine Lessons and Carols on radio 4 while my mum prepares the sprouts for tomorrow. Christmas is truly here 🥰

I've just finished reading Wuthering Heights for the first time. That is a seriously weird book. How anyone thinks it's romantic is beyond me.

🎁 Edinburgh’s very own The Phoenix Choir sing ‘Twelve Days of Clickbait’ at Central Hall in Tollcross. Next time a friend or relative complains about the state of (some) local news websites, send them this video. Lyrics in the replies. On the 12th day of clickbait, the headlines screamed at me:

This year on Bluesky I wrote 1,642 posts and 4,207 replies. I received 25,108 likes, whereas 2,559 was from my most popular post, and apparently I love saying "just" and 🤣! www.madebyolof.com/bluesky-wrap...

Reading this reminds me that in January I came up with the cracking story idea of the story of Rolf - how he went from being a flirty telegram boy to being radicalised by the far right

On a number 38 bus for the second time in my life, on the day it's national news! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...