Porridge with pears and cinnamon. Small coffee. Small cat. Boyfriend playing the double bass upstairs, beetroot roasting in the oven. It's the first day in ages where quietly content is the ruling emotion.

How many people would be comfortable buying a wedding ring that had been seized from a refugee. Maybe it was the last item they had to remember a loved one. Is that the world we want our government to actively encourage?

Never been more important to buy from craftspeople, painters, potters, illustrators, makers, carpenters, bakers and the like. Seek them out, follow them, support them and buy their goods. Use them or lose them etc etc

An absolutely fascinating and infuriating history of the development of "Rape kits." www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Our new street goes hard for Halloween. We were besieged by ghouls, witches, a pack of werewolves, "a haunted china doll" (strong work that girl) and the smallest yeti you ever saw.

Working from lovely, retro Jessie's today, safe from the rain

I keep thinking -whenever I look at the angry, frothing misinformation on my local Facebook group - about starting a media literacy course at the local libraries. Bad information makes people scared and miserable! But how could you do this in a way that was useful, not patronising and appealing?

Everyone who comments on any article ever

"Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry. How are you all feeling? I hope it's not too rough"

The Caerphilly result is what we need to see everywhere at the next election: people coordinating to vote tactically for parties which seek a fairer, kinder, greener country. Pushing out both those who have betrayed our trust AND those who seek to exploit that betrayal.

The current Traitors cliff hanger is a tough moment for your average middle-aged, heterosexual woman #celebritytraitors

"The idea of deporting people with settled status is disgusting, and anyone proposing it should be immediately drummed out of polite society. Breaking promises made in good faith to our friends and neighbours is racist, extremist and immoral." I'm basically shouting at the sky here, but still.

It's pub day for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2025, and the whole Best American series. I'm so proud of this book and all the brilliant, beautiful writing @susanorlean.bsky.social selected for it. bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

The more I think about her actual words, and how appallingly under-reported/understood they still seem to be, the more shocked & disgusted I am.

Immigrants in Britain are not an isolated monolith. They are part of families, of couples, of so many networks based on love and support, not just on money. If indefinite leave to remain goes, then my partner and I will both leave the country.

There's a cutesy-fication that happens with a lot of US discourse, there are wine moms, soccer moms, cat ladies. Older people are "so cute!", gay people showing affection to one another is "cute". It seems pretty linguistically entrenched.

Totally fascinated by this - something so big that I had no idea about.

Died on press day

One of the men plastering downstairs is doing it on STILTS, properly flying about the room. Is this normal? Or was he an acrobat in a former life?

Fascinated to read this about artist Lee Lozano, who made an art of withdrawing. The headline made me defensive and pitying, but there's much more to Lozano. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/t...

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

The Goonies - and I have zero interest in changing that.

Those tedious and mysteriously funded transphobes want to limit access to the Ponds so I’ve had a pleasant 10 mins filling this out on why seeing a variety of women is magic and judging by what people look like or can do is very slippery territory hampstead-heath-bathing-ponds.commonplace.isn

Mitford Sisters; champagne and shepherd's pie; Christmas shopping in Fortnums and Hatchards

My version of Proper Binmen

For reasons I've had to complete the FA's safeguarding training, and whilst taking nothing from the seriousness of the subject, I will never stop finding it funny that the FA has a whistleblowing policy.

I can no longer deal with being thwarted. Computers, estate agents, eBay buyers, errant cats, insurance providers and other sundry beings: hear me. I shall be thwart no more.

So, actually, sometimes fucking with the classics is an excellent idea. This is delicious enough to move me to post.

The #Greece #wildfires have affected nearly 100,000 ha / 257,000 acres Chios 40,000 Moiraika Achaia 20,000 Zakynthos 17,000 Filippiada 18,000 Paliambela 2,500 Patras 2,000 Greek authorities have requested EU firefighting aircrafts in a bid to stop the blazes from spreading.

Tonight we are in Nafpaktos, just across the Gulf of Corinth from Patras. We have been going about doing summer things - out for dinner, cocktails by the port - and watching the wildfires burn across the sea, while everyone's phones blare with alerts and evacuation warnings for nearby areas.

Former colleague/ good friend is sending the subject lines from old editions of Emerald Street. We were really quite funny. Fave so far is "Don't twist your melons man... sports bras for all"

Reposted the (excellent) uncle/ aunt Facebook comments thread knowing that, just hours ago, I greeted Greek niece and nephew, dress billowing in the marina wind, bangles clanking, with "DARLINGS! You smell so nice! Put your phone down and give me a hug." Am 100% Weird Foreign Aunt and here for it.

Had a lovely time at the wedding still haven't got the stains out of my dress xx

I had to bring some work on a family visit to Greece. Just three days, but still. My boyfriend's mum did *everything*. Cooked lunch, cleaned up, asked about laundry. Stuff just happened. And the difference it made to my productivity... those jokes about needing a wife...

I don't like that this is still the popular narrative of only childhood. Not to dismiss the author's experience, but it certainly wasn't mine. Also, as life gets more and more expensive, it sends a terrible message to parents who can't afford more than one. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In the square there's a man with a microphone telling a convoluted story about how he discovered Jesus Christ whilst driving a heavy goods vehicle to Bury St Edmunds.

“more viscerally at the moment, is what can the government do to make these bastards pay, basically, and get some of the money back that has been stripped out of our countryside” genuinely should be Labour policy towards water companies. Absolutely incredibly to suspend an MP for an amendment!

WeTransfer, the file sharing platform used by lots of creatives, updated its Ts&Cs this week to include a license for reusing uploaded content for a bunch of purposes, including machine learning - and then promptly issued a clarification wetransfer.com/blog/story/w...

Always enjoy listening in to the market traders as I walk past. Today, one man saying - somewhat bitterly - to a colleague: "you're languorous, that's what you are, languorous."

Look, in 1981 I believed that pureed apple was a complete meal and a monster lived in the pattern in my bedroom rug. And then I found out those things weren't true. We've had a while since Reagan to get over trickle-down.

Yesterday, driving out to the out-of-hours vet, we passed a hotel that was housing asylum seekers with a full demonstration outside. Send Them Back and Protect Our Girls posters. Toy small boats. Who are you, to spend a sunny Sunday evening full of hate? What happened?

It’s always “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, drop out of the public sphere and become a tradwife” and never “Ladies, if you are alienated by overwork, form a union.”

The Salt Path piece is a solid piece of journalism, and properly in the public interest. But it's also another bit of wonder gone from the world.

The cucumber sandwich holds no value, in terms of taste, nutrition, heft, anything.

Excellent work from the bots here, yes it is quite a dilemma

"we are in the midst of a #MeToo backlash, and... the brief span – now nearly a decade behind us – when men were held momentarily accountable for their sexual abuse and exploitation of women has been replaced with a sadistic and gruesomely triumphant restoration of the status quo ante".

If you've wondered why UK Labour appointed an ex-Amazon executive to chair the competition authority and handed over the entire creative industries' work to big tech barons and AI grifters, @petergeoghegan.bsky.social has the receipts: "this level of corporate influence undermines democracy."

Men are so emotional

god it's such small time behaviour to be against free movement, grow up

The sudden explosion of trans hatred and revulsion in recent years is just the start of what will inevitably tip towards the erosion of hard-won gay rights, abortion as health care, and women’s rights. It’s revolting and appalling and we must not stand for it. Being cruel to people is simply not on.