Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
All polling has consistently shown that Rayner rates worse than Starmer.
Now we know party members love to vote for the person they love the most - but if Labour MPs are worried about losing their seats are they really going to let members choose the one person who will maximise their chances of losing?
The biggest winner from a Rayner Labour leadership would be the Tories, she would squeeze back some Green voters but shed middle class voters back to the Tories and set up a Tory v Reform general election with Labour third most likely
There can be no Tory v Reform with Farage in a skirt taking the Tories to the right of Reform.
The only Tory v Reform would be a one nation centre party led by Hunt or Cleverley that too Lab and LD tactical votes
Reform and Tories under current leadership would share at best 45% of votes, probably 26 to 19 split
55% on centre left with heavy tactical voting to stop Reform and Reform in a skirt.
Lab would form Government as largest Party with LD and Green support to ensure anti right coalition government.
There can, currently Starmer Labour leads narrowly with higher earning middle class voters and Farage and Reform lead comfortably with working class voters. If Rayner became Labour leader then Labour would shift hard left, many middle class voters currently voting Labour would go Tory or LD even if Rayner won a few working class voters back from Reform and a few leftists back from the Greens.
It wouldn't even need Hunt or Cleverly as Kemi could take the centre ground Starmer had and Rayner vacated, Rayner Labour wouldn't be largest party, it would likely be third, indeed maybe even 4th as the LDs would likely surge too. Indeed you could even get the LDs second to Reform if Rayner replaced Starmer
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
Yes. I do wonder if that is true. I’ve no idea why but I’m going through a white wine phase and buying lots of it, instead of red. From all over the world and quality stuff. Consistently the French wine disappoints, especially the big names - like Chablis. Premier fucking cru my fucking Cornish arse
Was it always mediocre and the French just gaslit us with their wine reputation?
South African whites are now often sensational, and pretty good value in the 15-30 quid sweet spot
There is some decent white Burgandy out there. Chablis, though, is the nearest bit of Burgundy to Paris, and is on the river, so it was the white wine the Parisians drunk, and commanded a massive premium relative to quality.
For decent white Burgandy, you basically want Puligny-Montrachet, without the price tag: Saint Aubin and Rully would be my choices.
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
Yes. I do wonder if that is true. I’ve no idea why but I’m going through a white wine phase and buying lots of it, instead of red. From all over the world and quality stuff. Consistently the French wine disappoints, especially the big names - like Chablis. Premier fucking cru my fucking Cornish arse
Was it always mediocre and the French just gaslit us with their wine reputation?
South African whites are now often sensational, and pretty good value in the 15-30 quid sweet spot
Ones to look out for, which may become popular once people tire of Picpoul, are Ribolla Gialla from Fruili, and dry Furmint from Hungary. There are also some very good Soaves out there from smaller producers nowadays. I’d also mention some of the Ligurian whites like Pigato, but volumes are so low in relation to demand that you have to be in Liguria to find them.
It's about the Andy Malkinson case. He was the man wrongly convicted of rape who was eventually released. The man who did do the rape has now been convicted.
But it's what this case says about our institutions which is important. And about the CPS. Starmer was DPP at the time.
As Nelson says -
"Organisations supposed to protect us, keep us safe and ensure justice can fail, egregiously. Reports say so, then the pattern of failure continues with really quite severe circumstances. But the Malkinson case stands out, not least because Sir Keir Starmer was running the Crown Prosecution Service at the time - and not only has he said he didn’t know about the case (which has turned out to be a bit of a theme with him) but that he should not have been told. It’s this reaction, or lack thereof, that I find fascinating. You would think a lawyer committed to justice would be more shocked than anyone about the Malkinson case as a complete failure of the British state: an example of a system in possession of evidence that could have exonerated a man, which instead sat on that evidence while he spent another 11 years in jail."
He goes on - "There is, to be clear, no evidence that Sir Keir personally saw the Malkinson file. The CPS has said the decision was made by a reviewing lawyer. In that sense his case mirrors his defences on Savile, on the Rochdale grooming gangs, on the Post Office Horizon prosecutions - in each instance, the defence has been that the file did not cross his desk."
But when he was in charge the CPS did know - in 2009 - that there was forensic evidence exonerating Malkinson. It did nothing. Malkinson spent another 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. And Starmer has done nothing since.
"If anyone in public life should be able to explain what went wrong - institutionally, culturally, psychologically - between the 2009 CPS note and the 2020 release, it is the former DPP. The case is a gift to anyone who wants to argue that the British state systematically resists confronting its own errors.
And yet the Prime Minister’s line is not that he wants to confront it. His line is that he wasn’t told, and that he shouldn’t have been. That is not the reaction of a lawyer who thinks the Malkinson case is important. It is the reaction of a politician who thinks it is dangerous."
We are seeing the same behaviour now over Mandelson.
This is not the mark of a leader nor of someone who can even begin to repair the shredded competence and integrity of our institutions.
As Nelson says, it is a theme with Starmer. He knows all the tricks in the book to weasel out of any mistake he makes, and he seems to make plenty. As insincere as it comes.
A vegetarian who eats chicken when he's a bit hungry A multi millionaire whose brother died in poverty
Yes. The more I think about Starmer, the more I think that cynical gaslighting is his predominant characteristic:
- he poses as an expert administrator, while presiding over a series of obvious administrative disasters, losing various chiefs of staff, Mandelson, somehow contriving not to know about Jimmy Saville in an office he ran, etc. - he tries to seem competent, while consistently displaying poor judgement, - he claims to preside over a pro-growth government, while consistently undertaking measures to screw the economy - he is always seen in photos with two Union Jacks in the background, while desperately trying to hand over British territory and making us pay for the privilege, cosying up to Brussels in the most abject way, failing to fund the armed forces properly ... - he holds everybody else to the ministerial code, while excusing his own repeated violations of it - he ran as Labour leader as an extreme lefty, then ditched it the moment he won, using an excuse so preposterous as to be insulting to everybody's intelligence (he'd love to stick to those vote-losing policies, but the pandemic made them unviable) - etc etc etc
I think he is the most unappealing character we've ever had in Number 10, certainly up there, and about the least competent, Truss, Ted Heath and maybe Brown perhaps excepted. He never deserved to be Prime Minister, and Labour certainly merit the epic destruction in their vote share since he won.
One recalls the PB conniptions, left and right, over Boris' jibe to Starmer about Savile at PMQs.
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
Yes. I do wonder if that is true. I’ve no idea why but I’m going through a white wine phase and buying lots of it, instead of red. From all over the world and quality stuff. Consistently the French wine disappoints, especially the big names - like Chablis. Premier fucking cru my fucking Cornish arse
Was it always mediocre and the French just gaslit us with their wine reputation?
South African whites are now often sensational, and pretty good value in the 15-30 quid sweet spot
There is some decent white Burgandy out there. Chablis, though, is the nearest bit of Burgundy to Paris, and is on the river, so it was the white wine the Parisians drunk, and commanded a massive premium relative to quality.
For decent white Burgandy, you basically want Puligny-Montrachet, without the price tag: Saint Aubin and Rully would be my choices.
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
Yes. I do wonder if that is true. I’ve no idea why but I’m going through a white wine phase and buying lots of it, instead of red. From all over the world and quality stuff. Consistently the French wine disappoints, especially the big names - like Chablis. Premier fucking cru my fucking Cornish arse
Was it always mediocre and the French just gaslit us with their wine reputation?
South African whites are now often sensational, and pretty good value in the 15-30 quid sweet spot
Ones to look out for, which may become popular once people tire of Picpoul, are Ribolla Gialla from Fruili, and dry Furmint from Hungary. There are also some very good Soaves out there from smaller producers nowadays. I’d also mention some of the Ligurian whites like Pigato, but volumes are so low in relation to demand that you have to be in Liguria to find them.
Years ago I had a dry furmint from Cambridge Wine Merchants. Special offer, £6. One of the most pleasant white wines I've ever had. Bone dry but honeyed like a Chenin Blanc three times its price.
It's about the Andy Malkinson case. He was the man wrongly convicted of rape who was eventually released. The man who did do the rape has now been convicted.
But it's what this case says about our institutions which is important. And about the CPS. Starmer was DPP at the time.
As Nelson says -
"Organisations supposed to protect us, keep us safe and ensure justice can fail, egregiously. Reports say so, then the pattern of failure continues with really quite severe circumstances. But the Malkinson case stands out, not least because Sir Keir Starmer was running the Crown Prosecution Service at the time - and not only has he said he didn’t know about the case (which has turned out to be a bit of a theme with him) but that he should not have been told. It’s this reaction, or lack thereof, that I find fascinating. You would think a lawyer committed to justice would be more shocked than anyone about the Malkinson case as a complete failure of the British state: an example of a system in possession of evidence that could have exonerated a man, which instead sat on that evidence while he spent another 11 years in jail."
He goes on - "There is, to be clear, no evidence that Sir Keir personally saw the Malkinson file. The CPS has said the decision was made by a reviewing lawyer. In that sense his case mirrors his defences on Savile, on the Rochdale grooming gangs, on the Post Office Horizon prosecutions - in each instance, the defence has been that the file did not cross his desk."
But when he was in charge the CPS did know - in 2009 - that there was forensic evidence exonerating Malkinson. It did nothing. Malkinson spent another 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. And Starmer has done nothing since.
"If anyone in public life should be able to explain what went wrong - institutionally, culturally, psychologically - between the 2009 CPS note and the 2020 release, it is the former DPP. The case is a gift to anyone who wants to argue that the British state systematically resists confronting its own errors.
And yet the Prime Minister’s line is not that he wants to confront it. His line is that he wasn’t told, and that he shouldn’t have been. That is not the reaction of a lawyer who thinks the Malkinson case is important. It is the reaction of a politician who thinks it is dangerous."
We are seeing the same behaviour now over Mandelson.
This is not the mark of a leader nor of someone who can even begin to repair the shredded competence and integrity of our institutions.
As Nelson says, it is a theme with Starmer. He knows all the tricks in the book to weasel out of any mistake he makes, and he seems to make plenty. As insincere as it comes.
A vegetarian who eats chicken when he's a bit hungry A multi millionaire whose brother died in poverty
Yes. The more I think about Starmer, the more I think that cynical gaslighting is his predominant characteristic:
- he poses as an expert administrator, while presiding over a series of obvious administrative disasters, losing various chiefs of staff, Mandelson, somehow contriving not to know about Jimmy Saville in an office he ran, etc. - he tries to seem competent, while consistently displaying poor judgement, - he claims to preside over a pro-growth government, while consistently undertaking measures to screw the economy - he is always seen in photos with two Union Jacks in the background, while desperately trying to hand over British territory and making us pay for the privilege, cosying up to Brussels in the most abject way, failing to fund the armed forces properly ... - he holds everybody else to the ministerial code, while excusing his own repeated violations of it - he ran as Labour leader as an extreme lefty, then ditched it the moment he won, using an excuse so preposterous as to be insulting to everybody's intelligence (he'd love to stick to those vote-losing policies, but the pandemic made them unviable) - etc etc etc
I think he is the most unappealing character we've ever had in Number 10, certainly up there, and about the least competent, Truss, Ted Heath and maybe Brown perhaps excepted. He never deserved to be Prime Minister, and Labour certainly merit the epic destruction in their vote share since he won.
One recalls the PB conniptions, left and right, over Boris' jibe to Starmer about Savile at PMQs.
@Cyclefree You have totally and succinctly nailed Starmer.... He is certainly up there with the very worst PMs (it's the hypocrisy from 2TK that gets me...)
Anyway (nevermind about all that politics nonsense)
I'm so sorry to hear about your Stage 4 diagnosis, Hopefully they have you on treatments that can keep this thing in check for many years to come? 🙏
Cancer is a HUGE unknown and, I think, very, very individual (much more so than most doctors will admit)
I myself have had cancer (oral) which was nothing at all.
My lovely mum had stage 1 breast cancer in 2013 and was told categorically by an oncologist of 40 years experience, that her cancer "wouldn't kill her" - Yet in January 2022 she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer that had gone through her skeleton and she died in May 2022 (officially of "pneumonia" but it was, of course, the cancer underlying everything that actually killed her)
If I could give any advice to breast cancer patients, from what I've seen, it would be this - If your cancer is in any way hormonal and you are put on a five year course of hormonal treatment (my mum did 5 years on Anastrozole from 2014 to 2019) try and continue the treatment beyond five years (even if it's for life) as frequently women will come off the hormone treatment after five years and the cancer will then re-emerge, often more aggressively unfortunately.
So sorry for going on about my own story.
Please keep us informed, Miss Cycle and I wish you all the best going forwards.
All polling has consistently shown that Rayner rates worse than Starmer.
Now we know party members love to vote for the person they love the most - but if Labour MPs are worried about losing their seats are they really going to let members choose the one person who will maximise their chances of losing?
The biggest winner from a Rayner Labour leadership would be the Tories, she would squeeze back some Green voters but shed middle class voters back to the Tories and set up a Tory v Reform general election with Labour third most likely
There can be no Tory v Reform with Farage in a skirt taking the Tories to the right of Reform.
The only Tory v Reform would be a one nation centre party led by Hunt or Cleverley that too Lab and LD tactical votes
Reform and Tories under current leadership would share at best 45% of votes, probably 26 to 19 split
55% on centre left with heavy tactical voting to stop Reform and Reform in a skirt.
Lab would form Government as largest Party with LD and Green support to ensure anti right coalition government.
There can, currently Starmer Labour leads narrowly with higher earning middle class voters and Farage and Reform lead comfortably with working class voters. If Rayner became Labour leader then Labour would shift hard left, many middle class voters currently voting Labour would go Tory or LD even if Rayner won a few working class voters back from Reform and a few leftists back from the Greens.
It wouldn't even need Hunt or Cleverly as Kemi could take the centre ground Starmer had and Rayner vacated, Rayner Labour wouldn't be largest party, it would likely be third, indeed maybe even 4th as the LDs would likely surge too. Indeed you could even get the LDs second to Reform if Rayner replaced Starmer
Kemi could no more take the centre ground than Tommy Robinson
Her rhetoric is right wing
Her put down of anyone needing genuine help is right wing
Her ability to lie about everything she did prior to 2024 borders on mental disorder.
Too many skeletons in her closet, dubious law breaking, dubious educational qualifications and complete stretching of truth or credulity to call herself an engineer.
This time last year I was in hospital. During my stay the Supreme Court judgment on the proper interpretation of the Equality Act came out - on 16 April 2025. A year later the government has yet to issue the guidance to help service providers. It has said it will do so in May which means that it may not come into force until September, a year and a half after the judgment of the UK's top court. This delay puts service providers at legal risk, though of course they should be taking legal advice on the law, and it has given those who don't want to comply an excuse for not doing so. Even the UN has stated that British women and girls have been "left exposed" by the government's failure.
This behaviour shows utter contempt for Britain's women, the Supreme Court and the rule of law itself. Remarkably, it is happening under a government led by a piously self-regarding human rights lawyer with an Attorney-General insistent on compliance with every dot and comma of international law but blithely unconcerned with the government's failure to comply with domestic law. Taking its cue from this, the civil service has refused to withdraw its current unlawful internal policies, presumably on the basis that if the government can't be arsed with paying attention to the law, why should they be.
So I may write to him and point out that - 1. Invasive lobular breast cancer, which I have, is the 2nd most common type of breast cancer. 2. The current screening programme is ineffective at detecting it - either with mammograms, ultrasound or physical examination. 3. Women are not told this when they go for screening. They are given false reassurance, as I was, for many years. So that barely a year after a screening which told me there was no problem, I was told that not only had I had it for some time but it had progressed to Stage 4 and was now in my spine, ribs and pelvis. It is incurable. This false reassurance - and dismal outcome - is probably happening to other women right now, some of whom will be your wives, daughters, sisters, mothers etc.,. 4. Is this an example of the medical misogyny he is talking about and, if so, what is he proposing to do about this?
I am very happy to raise my voice on this but given that I first raised this issue with my health trust last November and got a reply at the end of March, how serious is he. Because frankly whatever Ministers from the PM down say about women & girls strikes me as so much hot air with little action behind it.
9 years ago one of my cousins was also diagnosed with breast cancer that was stage 4 at presentation. It was also not picked up on mammogram., so she was also unlucky.
I don't think it medical misogyny. If such tumours are undetectable by mammogram, ultrasound or self examination then how could they be screened for? In order to screen, we need a suitable test.
No screening programme picks up all lesions, there are always false positives and false negatives as well fresh lesions that pop up between screening events and progress quickly.
Have you had your screening mammograms reviewed? Was anything missed? If not, then it isn't the fault of the screening programme.
The information leaflet/weblink about breast screening is quite clear that mammography cannot find all breast cancers, so I do not think that the accusation of false reassurance is correct.
Why isn't there an effective test for the second most common type of breast cancer? Is one / can one be developed? I would hope that someone somewhere in the NHS or the cancer research bodies is asking these questions.
The breast consultant was pretty apologetic when she told me. She also said that they'd do an audit but the letter I received said that as it was a different health trust which did the screening they could not find out. Sigh! Silos.
I am not looking to blame anyone. Nor do I want to be thinking "if only". I live for now. The past cannot be changed. But maybe they could learn something because it seems extraordinary to me that one can go from nothing wrong to stage 4 cancer without anyone noticing anything - and for a pretty common type as well.
It seems that ILBC can be picked up by an MRI scan but typically not by a mammogram: Sadly being first detected at stage 4 is very common, both here & in the USA.
My guess is that, if they looked at this, NICE would have concluded that MRI scanning the entire female population would be spectacularly expensive & would lead to so many false positives that it simply wouldn’t be worth the effort. There’s probably a report buried somewhere.
Hoping for the best possible outcome for you @Cyclefree .
Thank you.
Stuff happens. I've made my peace with it not least because there is zero point worrying about something I can do nothing about it. It bothers my husband a lot though he does not show it. It has helped me to view it as I might one of my investigations into a cock up - helps me be detached, I guess. But the blunt truth is that I will never be cured or in remission; it could go horribly wrong and I will not make old bones. So best to concentrate on nice stuff from now on in as much as possible.
I have - rather pleasingly - lost lots of weight and have bought clothes from the hospice charity shop. I view this as an investment in my future. Plus people keep telling me how good I look and at this rate I shall be at my most beautiful just before I die. And with all my lovely new clothes will win the Best Dressed Corpse Competition. I certainly intend swanning down those steps in a ball gown this summer, a lovely drink in my hand. I may even post that photo!
You cannot possibly know that you will never be in remission or cured. And a doctor cannot say so with any certainty - they can only surmise.
It's what I have been told by the oncologist. I'd really rather not have false hope. The cancer can be treated to stop it spreading further. I can live with it and may die with it rather than because of it. But I understand that once it has metastasised, that cannot be reversed. At any event, for now I live as well as I can and largely ignore it day to day. And that, really, is enough of that.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
BREAKING: SKS left trapped inside No. 10 for several hours after no one told him he needs to open the door to leave.
"It's staggering. No one told me the operating procedure for the front door. Unforgivable. I've lost confidence in my team and they will have to resign".
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
BREAKING: SKS left trapped inside No. 10 for several hours after no one told him he needs to open the door to leave.
"It's staggering. No one told me the operating procedure for the front door. Unforgivable. I've lost confidence in my team and they will have to resign".
BREAKING: SKS left trapped inside No. 10 for several hours after no one told him he needs to open the door to leave.
"It's staggering. No one told me the operating procedure for the front door. Unforgivable. I've lost confidence in my team and they will have to resign".
How can you not rip the piss out of this entirely wank-ridden set-up?
Wind chill. The air moving past you results in forced convection. So you lose heat faster than would be the case by natural convection in still air at the same temperature.
So you lose heat at a rate equivalent to being in still air at a lower temperature.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
This time last year I was in hospital. During my stay the Supreme Court judgment on the proper interpretation of the Equality Act came out - on 16 April 2025. A year later the government has yet to issue the guidance to help service providers. It has said it will do so in May which means that it may not come into force until September, a year and a half after the judgment of the UK's top court. This delay puts service providers at legal risk, though of course they should be taking legal advice on the law, and it has given those who don't want to comply an excuse for not doing so. Even the UN has stated that British women and girls have been "left exposed" by the government's failure.
This behaviour shows utter contempt for Britain's women, the Supreme Court and the rule of law itself. Remarkably, it is happening under a government led by a piously self-regarding human rights lawyer with an Attorney-General insistent on compliance with every dot and comma of international law but blithely unconcerned with the government's failure to comply with domestic law. Taking its cue from this, the civil service has refused to withdraw its current unlawful internal policies, presumably on the basis that if the government can't be arsed with paying attention to the law, why should they be.
So I may write to him and point out that - 1. Invasive lobular breast cancer, which I have, is the 2nd most common type of breast cancer. 2. The current screening programme is ineffective at detecting it - either with mammograms, ultrasound or physical examination. 3. Women are not told this when they go for screening. They are given false reassurance, as I was, for many years. So that barely a year after a screening which told me there was no problem, I was told that not only had I had it for some time but it had progressed to Stage 4 and was now in my spine, ribs and pelvis. It is incurable. This false reassurance - and dismal outcome - is probably happening to other women right now, some of whom will be your wives, daughters, sisters, mothers etc.,. 4. Is this an example of the medical misogyny he is talking about and, if so, what is he proposing to do about this?
I am very happy to raise my voice on this but given that I first raised this issue with my health trust last November and got a reply at the end of March, how serious is he. Because frankly whatever Ministers from the PM down say about women & girls strikes me as so much hot air with little action behind it.
9 years ago one of my cousins was also diagnosed with breast cancer that was stage 4 at presentation. It was also not picked up on mammogram., so she was also unlucky.
I don't think it medical misogyny. If such tumours are undetectable by mammogram, ultrasound or self examination then how could they be screened for? In order to screen, we need a suitable test.
No screening programme picks up all lesions, there are always false positives and false negatives as well fresh lesions that pop up between screening events and progress quickly.
Have you had your screening mammograms reviewed? Was anything missed? If not, then it isn't the fault of the screening programme.
The information leaflet/weblink about breast screening is quite clear that mammography cannot find all breast cancers, so I do not think that the accusation of false reassurance is correct.
Why isn't there an effective test for the second most common type of breast cancer? Is one / can one be developed? I would hope that someone somewhere in the NHS or the cancer research bodies is asking these questions.
The breast consultant was pretty apologetic when she told me. She also said that they'd do an audit but the letter I received said that as it was a different health trust which did the screening they could not find out. Sigh! Silos.
I am not looking to blame anyone. Nor do I want to be thinking "if only". I live for now. The past cannot be changed. But maybe they could learn something because it seems extraordinary to me that one can go from nothing wrong to stage 4 cancer without anyone noticing anything - and for a pretty common type as well.
It seems that ILBC can be picked up by an MRI scan but typically not by a mammogram: Sadly being first detected at stage 4 is very common, both here & in the USA.
My guess is that, if they looked at this, NICE would have concluded that MRI scanning the entire female population would be spectacularly expensive & would lead to so many false positives that it simply wouldn’t be worth the effort. There’s probably a report buried somewhere.
Hoping for the best possible outcome for you @Cyclefree .
Thank you.
Stuff happens. I've made my peace with it not least because there is zero point worrying about something I can do nothing about it. It bothers my husband a lot though he does not show it. It has helped me to view it as I might one of my investigations into a cock up - helps me be detached, I guess. But the blunt truth is that I will never be cured or in remission; it could go horribly wrong and I will not make old bones. So best to concentrate on nice stuff from now on in as much as possible.
I have - rather pleasingly - lost lots of weight and have bought clothes from the hospice charity shop. I view this as an investment in my future. Plus people keep telling me how good I look and at this rate I shall be at my most beautiful just before I die. And with all my lovely new clothes will win the Best Dressed Corpse Competition. I certainly intend swanning down those steps in a ball gown this summer, a lovely drink in my hand. I may even post that photo!
I think that the right attitude. My cousin's husband was consumed by anger at times but she was more philosophical. Meticulous in her adherence to her treatment, but didn't let it define her.
What impressed me most is how she lived her life after diagnosis exactly the same as before. No bucket list for her but carried on knitting sea creatures, organising family parties and ferrying her daughters to after school activities. A life so well lived that nothing needed to be added apart from more of the same.
I know that we differ and have clashed on a number of issues, but one of the things that I value about PB is that this is a place where even the bitterest political disputes do not prevent us recognising our mutual humanity. Would that there would be more places like this in the world.
BREAKING: SKS left trapped inside No. 10 for several hours after no one told him he needs to open the door to leave.
"It's staggering. No one told me the operating procedure for the front door. Unforgivable. I've lost confidence in my team and they will have to resign".
How can you not rip the piss out of this entirely wank-ridden set-up?
Nobody is buying it. He just withers away.
TBF I have been ripping the pics out of SKS since 2021 but if nobody told him how was he supposed to know how to open the door
Is there a German word for "a recklessly foolish enterprise from which you're so desperate to extricate yourself that you give in to the other side but still insist on pretending it's all been a great victory"?
All polling has consistently shown that Rayner rates worse than Starmer.
Now we know party members love to vote for the person they love the most - but if Labour MPs are worried about losing their seats are they really going to let members choose the one person who will maximise their chances of losing?
The biggest winner from a Rayner Labour leadership would be the Tories, she would squeeze back some Green voters but shed middle class voters back to the Tories and set up a Tory v Reform general election with Labour third most likely
There can be no Tory v Reform with Farage in a skirt taking the Tories to the right of Reform.
The only Tory v Reform would be a one nation centre party led by Hunt or Cleverley that too Lab and LD tactical votes
Reform and Tories under current leadership would share at best 45% of votes, probably 26 to 19 split
55% on centre left with heavy tactical voting to stop Reform and Reform in a skirt.
Lab would form Government as largest Party with LD and Green support to ensure anti right coalition government.
There can, currently Starmer Labour leads narrowly with higher earning middle class voters and Farage and Reform lead comfortably with working class voters. If Rayner became Labour leader then Labour would shift hard left, many middle class voters currently voting Labour would go Tory or LD even if Rayner won a few working class voters back from Reform and a few leftists back from the Greens.
It wouldn't even need Hunt or Cleverly as Kemi could take the centre ground Starmer had and Rayner vacated, Rayner Labour wouldn't be largest party, it would likely be third, indeed maybe even 4th as the LDs would likely surge too. Indeed you could even get the LDs second to Reform if Rayner replaced Starmer
Kemi could no more take the centre ground than Tommy Robinson
Her rhetoric is right wing
Her put down of anyone needing genuine help is right wing
Her ability to lie about everything she did prior to 2024 borders on mental disorder.
Too many skeletons in her closet, dubious law breaking, dubious educational qualifications and complete stretching of truth or credulity to call herself an engineer.
She worked in an IT call centre.
Kemi could take the centre ground against Rayner even if not against Starmer, or indeed Burnham or Streeting.
Though Davey and the LDs would probably be the biggest winners of a Rayner Labour leadership and Polanski the biggest loser, the Tories and Reform staying roughly as they are
Is there a German word for "a recklessly foolish enterprise from which you're so desperate to extricate yourself that you give in to the other side but still insist on pretending it's all been a great victory"?
Donald Trump whether intentional or not, created an unprecedented divide and turmoil within Iran’s regime.
The bizarre promises he is making today on regime’s behalf has led to a state of total panic and confusion.
Even the mayor of Tehran is now openly calling out Araghchi and the upper apparatus.
Hours prior Fars News which is one of the most hardliner and pro regime publications inside the country also criticized the negotiating team and demanded answers.
From the looks of things, the cracks that were previously hidden away due to fog of war have now been exposed to the entire world.
Islamic Republic despite its posturing has never been more divided and unstable as it is in this moment of time.
It's about the Andy Malkinson case. He was the man wrongly convicted of rape who was eventually released. The man who did do the rape has now been convicted.
But it's what this case says about our institutions which is important. And about the CPS. Starmer was DPP at the time.
As Nelson says -
"Organisations supposed to protect us, keep us safe and ensure justice can fail, egregiously. Reports say so, then the pattern of failure continues with really quite severe circumstances. But the Malkinson case stands out, not least because Sir Keir Starmer was running the Crown Prosecution Service at the time - and not only has he said he didn’t know about the case (which has turned out to be a bit of a theme with him) but that he should not have been told. It’s this reaction, or lack thereof, that I find fascinating. You would think a lawyer committed to justice would be more shocked than anyone about the Malkinson case as a complete failure of the British state: an example of a system in possession of evidence that could have exonerated a man, which instead sat on that evidence while he spent another 11 years in jail."
He goes on - "There is, to be clear, no evidence that Sir Keir personally saw the Malkinson file. The CPS has said the decision was made by a reviewing lawyer. In that sense his case mirrors his defences on Savile, on the Rochdale grooming gangs, on the Post Office Horizon prosecutions - in each instance, the defence has been that the file did not cross his desk."
But when he was in charge the CPS did know - in 2009 - that there was forensic evidence exonerating Malkinson. It did nothing. Malkinson spent another 11 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. And Starmer has done nothing since.
"If anyone in public life should be able to explain what went wrong - institutionally, culturally, psychologically - between the 2009 CPS note and the 2020 release, it is the former DPP. The case is a gift to anyone who wants to argue that the British state systematically resists confronting its own errors.
And yet the Prime Minister’s line is not that he wants to confront it. His line is that he wasn’t told, and that he shouldn’t have been. That is not the reaction of a lawyer who thinks the Malkinson case is important. It is the reaction of a politician who thinks it is dangerous."
We are seeing the same behaviour now over Mandelson.
This is not the mark of a leader nor of someone who can even begin to repair the shredded competence and integrity of our institutions.
As Nelson says, it is a theme with Starmer. He knows all the tricks in the book to weasel out of any mistake he makes, and he seems to make plenty. As insincere as it comes.
A vegetarian who eats chicken when he's a bit hungry A multi millionaire whose brother died in poverty
Yes. The more I think about Starmer, the more I think that cynical gaslighting is his predominant characteristic:
- he poses as an expert administrator, while presiding over a series of obvious administrative disasters, losing various chiefs of staff, Mandelson, somehow contriving not to know about Jimmy Saville in an office he ran, etc. - he tries to seem competent, while consistently displaying poor judgement, - he claims to preside over a pro-growth government, while consistently undertaking measures to screw the economy - he is always seen in photos with two Union Jacks in the background, while desperately trying to hand over British territory and making us pay for the privilege, cosying up to Brussels in the most abject way, failing to fund the armed forces properly ... - he holds everybody else to the ministerial code, while excusing his own repeated violations of it - he ran as Labour leader as an extreme lefty, then ditched it the moment he won, using an excuse so preposterous as to be insulting to everybody's intelligence (he'd love to stick to those vote-losing policies, but the pandemic made them unviable) - etc etc etc
I think he is the most unappealing character we've ever had in Number 10, certainly up there, and about the least competent, Truss, Ted Heath and maybe Brown perhaps excepted. He never deserved to be Prime Minister, and Labour certainly merit the epic destruction in their vote share since he won.
One recalls the PB conniptions, left and right, over Boris' jibe to Starmer about Savile at PMQs.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Robot mowers would not work in this garden. And I like the physical work. It's one of the attractions.
Agree about glass. The effects you get when the light hits it can be astonishing. Noticing such small changes is what brings joy and a sort of contentment, I feel. You slow down but you are also using your senses fully. Both stretched and at rest.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Is there a German word for "a recklessly foolish enterprise from which you're so desperate to extricate yourself that you give in to the other side but still insist on pretending it's all been a great victory"?
Donald Trump whether intentional or not, created an unprecedented divide and turmoil within Iran’s regime.
The bizarre promises he is making today on regime’s behalf has led to a state of total panic and confusion.
Even the mayor of Tehran is now openly calling out Araghchi and the upper apparatus.
Hours prior Fars News which is one of the most hardliner and pro regime publications inside the country also criticized the negotiating team and demanded answers.
From the looks of things, the cracks that were previously hidden away due to fog of war have now been exposed to the entire world.
Islamic Republic despite its posturing has never been more divided and unstable as it is in this moment of time.
Not that any of this has been a good idea, but I don't think anyone would be surprised if the regime which has had a lot of people killed and suffered a lot of military and economic damage may have internal problems. Indeed, that lack of them up to this point has been one of the criticisms of the whole exercise.
Wind chill. The air moving past you results in forced convection. So you lose heat faster than would be the case by natural convection in still air at the same temperature.
So you lose heat at a rate equivalent to being in still air at a lower temperature.
Basic Chem Eng heat transfer stuff.
Thanks for the explanation, it has always bugged me (though not enough to look up obviously)
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
This time last year I was in hospital. During my stay the Supreme Court judgment on the proper interpretation of the Equality Act came out - on 16 April 2025. A year later the government has yet to issue the guidance to help service providers. It has said it will do so in May which means that it may not come into force until September, a year and a half after the judgment of the UK's top court. This delay puts service providers at legal risk, though of course they should be taking legal advice on the law, and it has given those who don't want to comply an excuse for not doing so. Even the UN has stated that British women and girls have been "left exposed" by the government's failure.
This behaviour shows utter contempt for Britain's women, the Supreme Court and the rule of law itself. Remarkably, it is happening under a government led by a piously self-regarding human rights lawyer with an Attorney-General insistent on compliance with every dot and comma of international law but blithely unconcerned with the government's failure to comply with domestic law. Taking its cue from this, the civil service has refused to withdraw its current unlawful internal policies, presumably on the basis that if the government can't be arsed with paying attention to the law, why should they be.
So I may write to him and point out that - 1. Invasive lobular breast cancer, which I have, is the 2nd most common type of breast cancer. 2. The current screening programme is ineffective at detecting it - either with mammograms, ultrasound or physical examination. 3. Women are not told this when they go for screening. They are given false reassurance, as I was, for many years. So that barely a year after a screening which told me there was no problem, I was told that not only had I had it for some time but it had progressed to Stage 4 and was now in my spine, ribs and pelvis. It is incurable. This false reassurance - and dismal outcome - is probably happening to other women right now, some of whom will be your wives, daughters, sisters, mothers etc.,. 4. Is this an example of the medical misogyny he is talking about and, if so, what is he proposing to do about this?
I am very happy to raise my voice on this but given that I first raised this issue with my health trust last November and got a reply at the end of March, how serious is he. Because frankly whatever Ministers from the PM down say about women & girls strikes me as so much hot air with little action behind it.
9 years ago one of my cousins was also diagnosed with breast cancer that was stage 4 at presentation. It was also not picked up on mammogram., so she was also unlucky.
I don't think it medical misogyny. If such tumours are undetectable by mammogram, ultrasound or self examination then how could they be screened for? In order to screen, we need a suitable test.
No screening programme picks up all lesions, there are always false positives and false negatives as well fresh lesions that pop up between screening events and progress quickly.
Have you had your screening mammograms reviewed? Was anything missed? If not, then it isn't the fault of the screening programme.
The information leaflet/weblink about breast screening is quite clear that mammography cannot find all breast cancers, so I do not think that the accusation of false reassurance is correct.
Why isn't there an effective test for the second most common type of breast cancer? Is one / can one be developed? I would hope that someone somewhere in the NHS or the cancer research bodies is asking these questions.
The breast consultant was pretty apologetic when she told me. She also said that they'd do an audit but the letter I received said that as it was a different health trust which did the screening they could not find out. Sigh! Silos.
I am not looking to blame anyone. Nor do I want to be thinking "if only". I live for now. The past cannot be changed. But maybe they could learn something because it seems extraordinary to me that one can go from nothing wrong to stage 4 cancer without anyone noticing anything - and for a pretty common type as well.
It seems that ILBC can be picked up by an MRI scan but typically not by a mammogram: Sadly being first detected at stage 4 is very common, both here & in the USA.
My guess is that, if they looked at this, NICE would have concluded that MRI scanning the entire female population would be spectacularly expensive & would lead to so many false positives that it simply wouldn’t be worth the effort. There’s probably a report buried somewhere.
Hoping for the best possible outcome for you @Cyclefree .
Thank you.
Stuff happens. I've made my peace with it not least because there is zero point worrying about something I can do nothing about it. It bothers my husband a lot though he does not show it. It has helped me to view it as I might one of my investigations into a cock up - helps me be detached, I guess. But the blunt truth is that I will never be cured or in remission; it could go horribly wrong and I will not make old bones. So best to concentrate on nice stuff from now on in as much as possible.
I have - rather pleasingly - lost lots of weight and have bought clothes from the hospice charity shop. I view this as an investment in my future. Plus people keep telling me how good I look and at this rate I shall be at my most beautiful just before I die. And with all my lovely new clothes will win the Best Dressed Corpse Competition. I certainly intend swanning down those steps in a ball gown this summer, a lovely drink in my hand. I may even post that photo!
I think that the right attitude. My cousin's husband was consumed by anger at times but she was more philosophical. Meticulous in her adherence to her treatment, but didn't let it define her.
What impressed me most is how she lived her life after diagnosis exactly the same as before. No bucket list for her but carried on knitting sea creatures, organising family parties and ferrying her daughters to after school activities. A life so well lived that nothing needed to be added apart from more of the same.
I know that we differ and have clashed on a number of issues, but one of the things that I value about PB is that this is a place where even the bitterest political disputes do not prevent us recognising our mutual humanity. Would that there would be more places like this in the world.
Thank you.
I don't intend to let this define me either. And husband is wonderful. Just a bit unimpressed with the NHS. Plus I think it is often harder for those who have to watch. But we have fun together
(PS I will continue telling you off when you're wrong, mind. 😁)
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black has to be the album of this century so far. Timeless really.
Although Arctic Monkey’s AM is brilliant too
My six year old son got a certificate at school for a poem he wrote about the sea today. Sad to hear it’s a dying art!
Of all the evenings, you’d expect this thread to be full of wild speculations about the prime minister’s impending demise (or so it seems) with bitter recriminations, gloating, backbiting etc
Instead we’ve waffled on about life, death, beer, cancer, cricket, white wine, robot lawnmowers, the potential decline of Chablis, the fate of Muscadet, cream teas, wind chill, Magnus Pyke, antique glassware, Co-op ale offers, @Cyclefree’s back garden, and @BlancheLivermore’s walk south from Brittany
All of which is oddly heartening, The PB pub is doing fine
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
If you want a great Irish poem -
An Irish Airman foresees his Death BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
Though for me the last lines of Marvell's To His Coy Mistress sum up the way to live -
Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black has to be the album of this century so far. Timeless really.
Although Arctic Monkey’s AM is brilliant too
My six year old son got a certificate at school for a poem he wrote about the sea today. Sad to hear it’s a dying art!
Congratulations to your son!
But yes, re poetry. Indeed it’s not so much dying, as dead
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black has to be the album of this century so far. Timeless really.
Although Arctic Monkey’s AM is brilliant too
My six year old son got a certificate at school for a poem he wrote about the sea today. Sad to hear it’s a dying art!
Congratulations to your son!
But yes, re poetry. Indeed it’s not so much dying, as dead
Well this is bollocks. Read some US poetry. There is some great stuff there. Also I rather thought Plath was overrated.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
“Morning, noon & bloody night, Seven sodding days a week, I slave at filthy WORK, that might Be done by any book-drunk freak. This goes on until I kick the bucket. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT”
If the temperature is 5C but it feels like -12C then it's -12C? Or is it? 🤔
I just don’t get that - if it feels like -12c, surely it is -12c? Believing it is really 5c seems like falling for a wind up (rather than wind chill)
I don't know how it's done nowadays, but originally temperatures were measured by thermometers (wet & dry bulbs) which were in specially designed little structures to allow air flow but to shield from wind etc. So the real temperature isn't affected by wind. OTOH, when you're out in a brisk wind, you are affected by it - the wind chill. So the temperature you experience is lower than the measured temperature.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Excellent. I agree.
Can anyone even name a poet who deserves to be in the pantheon since them?
Maybe George Mackay Brown?
Although I think you were saying "english"?
"The old go, one by one, like guttered flames. This past winter"
If the temperature is 5C but it feels like -12C then it's -12C? Or is it? 🤔
I just don’t get that - if it feels like -12c, surely it is -12c? Believing it is really 5c seems like falling for a wind up (rather than wind chill)
I don't know how it's done nowadays, but originally temperatures were measured by thermometers (wet & dry bulbs) which were in specially designed little structures to allow air flow but to shield from wind etc. So the real temperature isn't affected by wind. OTOH, when you're out in a brisk wind, you are affected by it - the wind chill. So the temperature you experience is lower than the measured temperature.
I refer the honourable member to the reply I gave some moments ago.
Wet bulb temperature is a different can of worms and I need to go to sleep.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Larkin was one of those people who looked older than they were.
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
Sometimes it’s just taste. You may like fuller bodied, butch wines. As do I - my favourite whites are Rhone varietals like Grenache blanc, and I love meaty Macon blancs too.
But for Chablis, unlike many areas, I’d always say go for the big negociants like William Fevre, and get a relatively older one because they’re best when they’re a bit honeyed. And get village appellations or premier cru. The grands crus are too expensive, and the basic Chablis is often thin.
This time last year I was in hospital. During my stay the Supreme Court judgment on the proper interpretation of the Equality Act came out - on 16 April 2025. A year later the government has yet to issue the guidance to help service providers. It has said it will do so in May which means that it may not come into force until September, a year and a half after the judgment of the UK's top court. This delay puts service providers at legal risk, though of course they should be taking legal advice on the law, and it has given those who don't want to comply an excuse for not doing so. Even the UN has stated that British women and girls have been "left exposed" by the government's failure.
This behaviour shows utter contempt for Britain's women, the Supreme Court and the rule of law itself. Remarkably, it is happening under a government led by a piously self-regarding human rights lawyer with an Attorney-General insistent on compliance with every dot and comma of international law but blithely unconcerned with the government's failure to comply with domestic law. Taking its cue from this, the civil service has refused to withdraw its current unlawful internal policies, presumably on the basis that if the government can't be arsed with paying attention to the law, why should they be.
So I may write to him and point out that - 1. Invasive lobular breast cancer, which I have, is the 2nd most common type of breast cancer. 2. The current screening programme is ineffective at detecting it - either with mammograms, ultrasound or physical examination. 3. Women are not told this when they go for screening. They are given false reassurance, as I was, for many years. So that barely a year after a screening which told me there was no problem, I was told that not only had I had it for some time but it had progressed to Stage 4 and was now in my spine, ribs and pelvis. It is incurable. This false reassurance - and dismal outcome - is probably happening to other women right now, some of whom will be your wives, daughters, sisters, mothers etc.,. 4. Is this an example of the medical misogyny he is talking about and, if so, what is he proposing to do about this?
I am very happy to raise my voice on this but given that I first raised this issue with my health trust last November and got a reply at the end of March, how serious is he. Because frankly whatever Ministers from the PM down say about women & girls strikes me as so much hot air with little action behind it.
I'm extremely sorry for your health situation and the prognosis and I know all of PB is rooting for you and hopes the headers keep coming despite things.
But on the screening thing I suspect an issue is that the powers-that-be (NICE etc) feel that if they let it be known that the screening doesn't cover all bases then they fear there will be a drop off in women coming forward to be screened.
Just a thought. Feel free to shoot me down.
Yes I am aware that it is a balancing exercise. And I can understand the concern about not putting women off. And I also take on board @bondegezou's comments that no screening will work 100% and they tell you that. But there were no other symptoms - other than 3 breast operations between the ages of 24 and 40 which showed repeated benign tumours - adenomas. There was nothing unusual after my last op. I come from a medical family. I have always taken my health seriously - not least because of all the other stuff I have endured. I made the screeners fully aware of my medical history. Despite it no-one ever said "hey maybe you should do a CT scan" which is what, by chance, eventually uncovered this. And at the last stage before it becomes terminal.
Is this just very bad luck for me? Or is there something more systemic which needs looking at? Were clues missed which shouldn't have been?
If this screening does not work for this particular type - not just that no screening is 100% effective - then this needs looking at and the message to women, especially to women like me needs to be a lot clearer. I did everything I was told to. But it was pure chance that I got this diagnosis. If a year ago I had just put my chest pain down to a bit of heavy gardening that morning and not gone to A&E I might still not know. Or worse.
Talking of which this is the result of my hard work last summer.
A very pleasing bed of flowers. I'm still at the very early stage of killing things to make way for what we want to grow, but I'm kinda enjoying the battle with the bamboo still.
Bamboo is a nightmare. Should never be planted in anything other than a bucket. And preferably not at all. A horrible looking thing.
To create that bed I had to move hundreds of rocks. Then put down ca 800 litres of topsoil and compost and then plant each individual tulip, daffodil, narcissus and allium bulb. Plus then plant each of the daphnes, viburnums, salvia uliginosa and a rose. From the top you can see Coniston Old Man.
To the left there is a crag - it's beautiful but I have had to get rid of mounds and mounds of nettles and brambles - so now I have some beds for an alpine rockery and a herb garden (as the kitchen is nearby). It is a very sunny as well as windy spot. For anyone wanting really good herb plants by post Herbal Haven are the best.
It's a shame I am limited to only 1 photo per day. I've really only come back to share more photos. Next week raised beds in stone are being built opposite my new garden room.
The previous owners (and builders) of our house really liked two invasive plants. Bamboo is one. The larger bed is beside the house, and there's a smaller clump beside the road. They had some bamboo wall stickers in the kitchen to emphasise their attraction.
The other is montbretia, which is everywhere on road verges across West Cork. One of the rooms in the house is painted a vivid green, and another a bright orange to match the plant, and it will be a job of work to remove it from the garden, but I've decided to tackle the bamboo first. It's a really attractive flowering plant, but it seems impossible to keep under control.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Excellent. I agree.
Can anyone even name a poet who deserves to be in the pantheon since them?
Maybe George Mackay Brown?
Although I think you were saying "english"?
"The old go, one by one, like guttered flames. This past winter"
"In 1947, Stromness voted to allow pubs to open again, the town having been "dry" since the 1920s. When the first bar opened in 1948, Mackay Brown first tasted alcohol. He found alcoholic drinks "a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself 'If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness'"."
"And when or if the sun shines Lighting our once beautiful features We'll smile but only for seconds For to be caught smiling is to acknowledge life A brave but useless show of compassion And that is forbidden in this drab and colorless world"
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Larkin was one of those people who looked older than they were.
Mind you in them days didn't most people?
Were there more bald young people around? It seemed so.
Quite an interesting Mark Felton, about the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic State and Israel as allies launching air attacks on Saddam Hussein's nuclear programme in 1980.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black has to be the album of this century so far. Timeless really.
Although Arctic Monkey’s AM is brilliant too
My six year old son got a certificate at school for a poem he wrote about the sea today. Sad to hear it’s a dying art!
In all sincerity I advance William Shatner's 2004 album "Has Been" as the album of the century. Genuinely brilliant and gets better on every listen. "Common People*" is better than the original. "That's me trying" is one of the most moving short stories I've ever heard. "You'll have time" is hilarious and original and musically brilliant in equal measure. There is genuinely not a dull moment on the album. If you are wondering how William Shatner achieved quite such brilliance, well, Ben Folds helped a lot.
*This version of Common People opened the disco at our wedding. Filled the floor, it did.
This time last year I was in hospital. During my stay the Supreme Court judgment on the proper interpretation of the Equality Act came out - on 16 April 2025. A year later the government has yet to issue the guidance to help service providers. It has said it will do so in May which means that it may not come into force until September, a year and a half after the judgment of the UK's top court. This delay puts service providers at legal risk, though of course they should be taking legal advice on the law, and it has given those who don't want to comply an excuse for not doing so. Even the UN has stated that British women and girls have been "left exposed" by the government's failure.
This behaviour shows utter contempt for Britain's women, the Supreme Court and the rule of law itself. Remarkably, it is happening under a government led by a piously self-regarding human rights lawyer with an Attorney-General insistent on compliance with every dot and comma of international law but blithely unconcerned with the government's failure to comply with domestic law. Taking its cue from this, the civil service has refused to withdraw its current unlawful internal policies, presumably on the basis that if the government can't be arsed with paying attention to the law, why should they be.
So I may write to him and point out that - 1. Invasive lobular breast cancer, which I have, is the 2nd most common type of breast cancer. 2. The current screening programme is ineffective at detecting it - either with mammograms, ultrasound or physical examination. 3. Women are not told this when they go for screening. They are given false reassurance, as I was, for many years. So that barely a year after a screening which told me there was no problem, I was told that not only had I had it for some time but it had progressed to Stage 4 and was now in my spine, ribs and pelvis. It is incurable. This false reassurance - and dismal outcome - is probably happening to other women right now, some of whom will be your wives, daughters, sisters, mothers etc.,. 4. Is this an example of the medical misogyny he is talking about and, if so, what is he proposing to do about this?
I am very happy to raise my voice on this but given that I first raised this issue with my health trust last November and got a reply at the end of March, how serious is he. Because frankly whatever Ministers from the PM down say about women & girls strikes me as so much hot air with little action behind it.
I'm extremely sorry for your health situation and the prognosis and I know all of PB is rooting for you and hopes the headers keep coming despite things.
But on the screening thing I suspect an issue is that the powers-that-be (NICE etc) feel that if they let it be known that the screening doesn't cover all bases then they fear there will be a drop off in women coming forward to be screened.
Just a thought. Feel free to shoot me down.
Yes I am aware that it is a balancing exercise. And I can understand the concern about not putting women off. And I also take on board @bondegezou's comments that no screening will work 100% and they tell you that. But there were no other symptoms - other than 3 breast operations between the ages of 24 and 40 which showed repeated benign tumours - adenomas. There was nothing unusual after my last op. I come from a medical family. I have always taken my health seriously - not least because of all the other stuff I have endured. I made the screeners fully aware of my medical history. Despite it no-one ever said "hey maybe you should do a CT scan" which is what, by chance, eventually uncovered this. And at the last stage before it becomes terminal.
Is this just very bad luck for me? Or is there something more systemic which needs looking at? Were clues missed which shouldn't have been?
If this screening does not work for this particular type - not just that no screening is 100% effective - then this needs looking at and the message to women, especially to women like me needs to be a lot clearer. I did everything I was told to. But it was pure chance that I got this diagnosis. If a year ago I had just put my chest pain down to a bit of heavy gardening that morning and not gone to A&E I might still not know. Or worse.
Talking of which this is the result of my hard work last summer.
A very pleasing bed of flowers. I'm still at the very early stage of killing things to make way for what we want to grow, but I'm kinda enjoying the battle with the bamboo still.
Are you building a railway in Thailand?
We did consider taking all the bamboo canes to sell down at the market, but it was enough work chopping them down that I couldn't face cutting them to regular lengths and bundling them.
We probably still have enough canes that were kept in good condition out of the rain to build a single span of a bridge (or some sort of flower trellis) but I'm not sure how happy I'll be to see bamboo once this process is over!
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
Sometimes it’s just taste. You may like fuller bodied, butch wines. As do I - my favourite whites are Rhone varietals like Grenache blanc, and I love meaty Macon blancs too.
But for Chablis, unlike many areas, I’d always say go for the big negociants like William Fevre, and get a relatively older one because they’re best when they’re a bit honeyed. And get village appellations or premier cru. The grands crus are too expensive, and the basic Chablis is often thin.
Yes, I like big wines, Unless I am just drinking to accompany food and the food is the big thing, but even then I like big wine, so fuck it, I like big wines, I want to taste it, I want mouthfeel and finish
I might but some older Chablis, as an experiment - it’s interesting what you say about climate change
My last big wine revelation was Balkan wines. Moldova, FYROM and Bulgaria etc. Before that, Greek wines (even reds). Georgia was fun. I still rate Argentina as the best value wine source. I am right now drinking a brilliant Malbec from the wine shop in Ballylahinch
Argentina is where Oz and NZ were 10-20 years ago? Great wines at surprisingly good prices. Now good Aussie Shiraz or Pinot costs real money and NZ Sauvignon Blanc is in danger of overproducing and ruining the brand
As a vigneron this might interest you. I’ve been meeting Irish whiskey producers on this trip, and they are happy they are in a resurgent industry (despite falling booze intake overall, and Trump’s tariffs) but they don’t know how to sell their premium product. They want something like “single malt” which is the marketing gizmo which made high quality Scotch famously desired worldwide. They’ve tried “single pot still” but no one understands it and it hasn’t worked
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Excellent. I agree.
Can anyone even name a poet who deserves to be in the pantheon since them?
Maybe George Mackay Brown?
Although I think you were saying "english"?
"The old go, one by one, like guttered flames. This past winter"
"In 1947, Stromness voted to allow pubs to open again, the town having been "dry" since the 1920s. When the first bar opened in 1948, Mackay Brown first tasted alcohol. He found alcoholic drinks "a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself 'If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness'"."
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
I have Rhubarb and Orange from my jam collaborator in Deal, who also has a fancy man in the south of Ireland where she travels via a boat train ticket for a ridiculously small price. Said fancy man is a radio ham and has a field full of aerials.
Stone wall and lawn. And forsythia. Such a cheering sight. The raised beds will be in similar stonework on the other side of that wall - creating a parterre /potager view from the seats at the top of the crag.
I mean law and politics are all very well. But designing and making something creative and which outlives you is the real joy in life.
Nice
And I know whereof you speak. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I have really enjoyed creating two balconies full of herbs, succulents, and little trees this last year. I have two south facing balconies. They are basically too small for chairs so never really did much until a friend firmly suggested: put some fucking greenery out there
Now I have done that and they are full of life. Bees and spiders and ants too, but hey ho. It’s all life. They demand attention and I actually worry about them when I go away, which is unusual for me - to put it mildly - but the reward is significant. Somehow the greenery outside the flat makes the whole flat seem much bigger and nicer, and I am not sure why. It’s just a lot of pot plants. But it works
And yes I get a buzz out of curating and creating something pretty and alive
I saw this in one of your flat photos and was going to tease you about it. A little bit of greenery is so cheering even in the smallest space.Get an automatic sprinkler if you can.
I got v excited about my new lawnmower which has - don't laugh - assisted power because the entire garden (half a hectare) is on a hill and the salesman thought that it would be helpful for me. Anyway, the scent of newly mown grass is childhood. And lying on a lawn in sunshine is just pure happiness.
That wall is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. The detail of the work is wonderful. The guy who made it is both a craftsman and an artist. Working with him to build this - and much else - was a real highlight of last year.
Yeah, I’m a late developer when it comes to interior design and feng shui and home comforts. Mainly because I spent the first four decades of my adult life furiously exploring the world, and doing lots of risky shit, from dangerous drugs to dangerous war zones, almost none of which I regret, because it was fabulously exciting. But now I have accepted my age, and belatedly seen the great positives in things like…. Plants. Sometimes I just sit in my chair in my flat and stare at my plants, for half an hour. True story. It soothes me. I don’t know why. I can also do the same with a really exquisite antique - recently I bought an Art Nouveau C1900 Kralik Boemian Iridescent Hinged Metal Lidded Ewer Pitcher. 170 pounds for a glass jar!
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
Rhubarb and ginger jam sounds like the basis for a really great cream tea...
It was genuinely delicious. Served with butter on “Sultana soda bannock cake” and a pot of good strong black tea. In a winsome little cottage in the lough-side wilds of County Down
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Hope you helping yourself to sleep with a few poems from Seamus Heaney?
Nothing will ever reconcile me to Heaney. He was a mediocre poet, competent at best and pathetic at worst
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
Point of order: Larkin died twenty years after Plath.
A fair point but Larkin was older than Plath, so I put her later, even though he lingered?
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Excellent. I agree.
Can anyone even name a poet who deserves to be in the pantheon since them?
Maybe George Mackay Brown?
Although I think you were saying "english"?
"The old go, one by one, like guttered flames. This past winter"
"In 1947, Stromness voted to allow pubs to open again, the town having been "dry" since the 1920s. When the first bar opened in 1948, Mackay Brown first tasted alcohol. He found alcoholic drinks "a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself 'If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness'"."
As we're talking about Larkin and not railways (for a change), here's a photo I took on Coventry station a few years ago, when return to the Premier League seemed a forlorn hope:
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
Sometimes it’s just taste. You may like fuller bodied, butch wines. As do I - my favourite whites are Rhone varietals like Grenache blanc, and I love meaty Macon blancs too.
But for Chablis, unlike many areas, I’d always say go for the big negociants like William Fevre, and get a relatively older one because they’re best when they’re a bit honeyed. And get village appellations or premier cru. The grands crus are too expensive, and the basic Chablis is often thin.
Yes, I like big wines, Unless I am just drinking to accompany food and the food is the big thing, but even then I like big wine, so fuck it, I like big wines, I want to taste it, I want mouthfeel and finish
I might but some older Chablis, as an experiment - it’s interesting what you say about climate change
My last big wine revelation was Balkan wines. Moldova, FYROM and Bulgaria etc. Before that, Greek wines (even reds). Georgia was fun. I still rate Argentina as the best value wine source. I am right now drinking a brilliant Malbec from the wine shop in Ballylahinch
Argentina is where Oz and NZ were 10-20 years ago? Great wines at surprisingly good prices. Now good Aussie Shiraz or Pinot costs real money and NZ Sauvignon Blanc is in danger of overproducing and ruining the brand
As a vigneron this might interest you. I’ve been meeting Irish whiskey producers on this trip, and they are happy they are in a resurgent industry (despite falling booze intake overall, and Trump’s tariffs) but they don’t know how to sell their premium product. They want something like “single malt” which is the marketing gizmo which made high quality Scotch famously desired worldwide. They’ve tried “single pot still” but no one understands it and it hasn’t worked
Such is the booze biz. You need the salesmanship
They’re absolutely right. Branding in luxury drinks is difficult. Particularly difficult to make money in drinks that require years or decades of love and attention, when a trendy gin or vodka maker with good labelling can knock out some flavoured white ethanol in weeks and sell it at almost the same price.
English wine has navel gazed over its own branding for years. I think, accidentally, it’s landed on an OK branding. It doesn’t have the appellation terroir cachet, except potentially for the crouch valley, but it maybe doesn’t need it because it manages to garner both the patriotic Tory shires market and the food miles conscious weekend daytripping woke London buyer, and carries with it the beloved posh English associations for the foreign palate of croquet, Wimbledon, downton abbey, afternoon tea and red phone boxes.
It looks like I was right, the US isn't opening up the Strait until Iran has handed over the Uranium and a deal is signed which includes inspectors of nuclear sites. Ships are making for the exit but then turning around as US warships are still keeping the blockade going, Iran is going to have to make a deal or they're looking at societal collapse within weeks.
Is it Weatherspoons is it Witherspoons When I go there time just zooms Start drinking at 9am Sober up have lunch and get drunk again
You wanna go where everyone knows your name To a a friendly pub that's part of a chain You need a drink you need a meal In comfortable surroundings with a classic pub feel The menu is so extensive and the wine list is comprehensive You can have red wine white or pink They will even put ice in your drink Competitive prices that cant be beat And you never know who your gonna meet Different conversations can be enjoyed With doctors dentists and the unemployed Like an old folks home if it had a bar Full of people you probably read the star In every major city in every major town If you can't find a Wetherspoons your a fucking clown
Is it Weatherspoons is it Witherspoons When I go there time just zooms Start drinking at 9am Sober up have lunch and get drunk again
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
Sometimes it’s just taste. You may like fuller bodied, butch wines. As do I - my favourite whites are Rhone varietals like Grenache blanc, and I love meaty Macon blancs too.
But for Chablis, unlike many areas, I’d always say go for the big negociants like William Fevre, and get a relatively older one because they’re best when they’re a bit honeyed. And get village appellations or premier cru. The grands crus are too expensive, and the basic Chablis is often thin.
Yes, I like big wines, Unless I am just drinking to accompany food and the food is the big thing, but even then I like big wine, so fuck it, I like big wines, I want to taste it, I want mouthfeel and finish
I might but some older Chablis, as an experiment - it’s interesting what you say about climate change
My last big wine revelation was Balkan wines. Moldova, FYROM and Bulgaria etc. Before that, Greek wines (even reds). Georgia was fun. I still rate Argentina as the best value wine source. I am right now drinking a brilliant Malbec from the wine shop in Ballylahinch
Argentina is where Oz and NZ were 10-20 years ago? Great wines at surprisingly good prices. Now good Aussie Shiraz or Pinot costs real money and NZ Sauvignon Blanc is in danger of overproducing and ruining the brand
As a vigneron this might interest you. I’ve been meeting Irish whiskey producers on this trip, and they are happy they are in a resurgent industry (despite falling booze intake overall, and Trump’s tariffs) but they don’t know how to sell their premium product. They want something like “single malt” which is the marketing gizmo which made high quality Scotch famously desired worldwide. They’ve tried “single pot still” but no one understands it and it hasn’t worked
Such is the booze biz. You need the salesmanship
They’re absolutely right. Branding in luxury drinks is difficult. Particularly difficult to make money in drinks that require years or decades of love and attention, when a trendy gin or vodka maker with good labelling can knock out some flavoured white ethanol in weeks and sell it at almost the same price.
English wine has navel gazed over its own branding for years. I think, accidentally, it’s landed on an OK branding. It doesn’t have the appellation terroir cachet, except potentially for the crouch valley, but it maybe doesn’t need it because it manages to garner both the patriotic Tory shires market and the food miles conscious weekend daytripping woke London buyer, and carries with it the beloved posh English associations for the foreign palate of croquet, Wimbledon, downton abbey, afternoon tea and red phone boxes.
Agreed, which is why I’ve always thought they should settle on the name “English Fizz” as the OFFICIAL name for English Fizz. It sounds like Eton Mess. it sounds casually, uncaringly posh - which is much better than self consciously aspirational. It sounds like Pimm’s. It sounds like royals getting drunk. It sounds desirably Ascot and picnic, where rich Englishness shades into hedonism (much admired worldwide)
It’s way better than “cremant” or “trentodoc” or “cava” and it will give prosecco and champagne a run for their money, esp as it improves even more
As we're talking about Larkin and not railways (for a change), here's a photo I took on Coventry station a few years ago, when return to the Premier League seemed a forlorn hope:
As we're talking about Larkin and not railways (for a change), here's a photo I took on Coventry station a few years ago, when return to the Premier League seemed a forlorn hope:
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
Sometimes it’s just taste. You may like fuller bodied, butch wines. As do I - my favourite whites are Rhone varietals like Grenache blanc, and I love meaty Macon blancs too.
But for Chablis, unlike many areas, I’d always say go for the big negociants like William Fevre, and get a relatively older one because they’re best when they’re a bit honeyed. And get village appellations or premier cru. The grands crus are too expensive, and the basic Chablis is often thin.
Yes, I like big wines, Unless I am just drinking to accompany food and the food is the big thing, but even then I like big wine, so fuck it, I like big wines, I want to taste it, I want mouthfeel and finish
I might but some older Chablis, as an experiment - it’s interesting what you say about climate change
My last big wine revelation was Balkan wines. Moldova, FYROM and Bulgaria etc. Before that, Greek wines (even reds). Georgia was fun. I still rate Argentina as the best value wine source. I am right now drinking a brilliant Malbec from the wine shop in Ballylahinch
Argentina is where Oz and NZ were 10-20 years ago? Great wines at surprisingly good prices. Now good Aussie Shiraz or Pinot costs real money and NZ Sauvignon Blanc is in danger of overproducing and ruining the brand
As a vigneron this might interest you. I’ve been meeting Irish whiskey producers on this trip, and they are happy they are in a resurgent industry (despite falling booze intake overall, and Trump’s tariffs) but they don’t know how to sell their premium product. They want something like “single malt” which is the marketing gizmo which made high quality Scotch famously desired worldwide. They’ve tried “single pot still” but no one understands it and it hasn’t worked
Such is the booze biz. You need the salesmanship
They’re absolutely right. Branding in luxury drinks is difficult. Particularly difficult to make money in drinks that require years or decades of love and attention, when a trendy gin or vodka maker with good labelling can knock out some flavoured white ethanol in weeks and sell it at almost the same price.
English wine has navel gazed over its own branding for years. I think, accidentally, it’s landed on an OK branding. It doesn’t have the appellation terroir cachet, except potentially for the crouch valley, but it maybe doesn’t need it because it manages to garner both the patriotic Tory shires market and the food miles conscious weekend daytripping woke London buyer, and carries with it the beloved posh English associations for the foreign palate of croquet, Wimbledon, downton abbey, afternoon tea and red phone boxes.
It is indeed an accidentally Catholic customer base.
There's an English-Wine-only shop in Cambridge called "Grape Britannia". Hardcore remainer owners.
Is it Weatherspoons is it Witherspoons When I go there time just zooms Start drinking at 9am Sober up have lunch and get drunk again
You wanna go where everyone knows your name To a a friendly pub that's part of a chain You need a drink you need a meal In comfortable surroundings with a classic pub feel The menu is so extensive and the wine list is comprehensive You can have red wine white or pink They will even put ice in your drink Competitive prices that cant be beat And you never know who your gonna meet Different conversations can be enjoyed With doctors dentists and the unemployed Like an old folks home if it had a bar Full of people you probably read the star In every major city in every major town If you can't find a Wetherspoons your a fucking clown
Is it Weatherspoons is it Witherspoons When I go there time just zooms Start drinking at 9am Sober up have lunch and get drunk again
As we're talking about Larkin and not railways (for a change), here's a photo I took on Coventry station a few years ago, when return to the Premier League seemed a forlorn hope:
Cyclefree - I put a "like" on your post in the previous thread, not, of course. because I like what has happened, and is happening. But because I greatly appreciate your willingness to inform us of these problems.
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
Yes Muscadet was big in the 70s and 80s. It’s a “coastal white” just like Picpoul, Assyrtiko, Vinho Verde, Xacoli.
Quality was shit back then. Spurred by their popularity, they over-produced and under-aged. Just like Beaujolais and Chianti and Rioja. Then the market crashed and they retrenched. There is still poor bulk Muscadet, but these days lots of very good small scale production and a big proportion of natural and esoteric wines.
English Muscadet is hard to judge. There is a sample size of one: me. Mine is nice.
Will be going back to the Champagne area next month. When there last time, there were squads of locals harvesting by hand. Will the picking be locals or do you get some of the itinerant Europeans to come over and do the work?
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
He stuck his head so far in official sand, there’s absolutely no way that he formally wasn’t an ostrich
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
Managed to get to the Cathedral just before it got dark
Lush
i do admire the way the French protect their ancient town centres. Proper attention is paid
I am trying to identify the place, without internet assistance. France has a LOT of cathedrals. The half timbered houses suggest Alsace, the Jura, eastern France. The cathedral is not perfect or huge so not a major city. Hmmm
But then I THINK I vaguely remember you saying you were walking from south Brittany, which confuses things. And western France does also have a lot of that half timbering
I am gonna say.. Vannes. But with about 6% confidence
It is indeed Vannes, and it is lush
I’m now sitting in a restaurant in the old ramparts of the city overlooking a beautiful garden
I’ve ordered black pasta with salmon, and I’m rather enjoying a half bottle of muscadet while enjoying the view
Muscadet is an excellent appetite-sharpener.
Mind you, walking all day probably is too.
I am the only vigneron in Britain growing Melon de Bourgogne (MelonB), the Muscadet grape.
I made a small batch of still MelonB last year and yrs excellent.
Am I imagining it or was “muscadet” weirdly popular in Britain in the 70s? I seem to dimly recall, as a child, my parents saying “Muscadet” the same way people say “Picpoul” now - ie not hugely globally popular but with enough branding to create a trend \ In my experience Muscadet in France is dismayingly bad. Cheap, thin, boring
I trust yours is much better
"Muscadet, typecast as a cheap and cheerful partner for seafood, was washed away by the fruit-rich new wines of the New World, its complacent producers having cashed in with enormous quantities of sub-standard, brand-damaging acid water. Again, it’s taken a while, but a hardcore of small producers around the Loire estuary have been chiselling out a reputation for dry whites on a par with chablis."
When I was in Brittany I kept ordering Muscadet and I kept getting the cheap feeble shite and it was never good, only at best tolerable. Yuk
I stopped ordering Muscadet. Also, I hate to say this, but Chablis is not what it was, or maybe it never was
The best white wines are no longer French. Spain, Portugal, South Africa, the USA, Chile and especially Greece are making amazing and vastly superior whites. The only problem is that a lot of people have realized this and the best Greek whites are now properly expensive
English white is now pretty good, too. But not as good as English Fizz
Chablis has always been shit.
No no no no no.
A lot of the Chablis and petit Chablis we get in Britain is mediocre (not shit, I’ve never drunk a Chablis that I wanted to spit out), but they make some awesome wines.
Essentially Chablis in the 2020s is like Cote de Beaune in the 1990s. 30 years of climate change. It’s just we’ve had 30 years of ever-increasing ripeness in white burgundy that leaves Chablis seeming spare and thin. But it’s still cool climate Chardonnay at its best, and you should make the most of it because within 2 decades it’ll taste like Macon tastes now.
I trust your judgment, as a vigneron, but can you condense this into hard retail advice? What Chablis is still worth buying, and at what price? Because the last three I’ve bought have been seriously expensive and seriously meh, and I am about to give up
I would go with Montrachet, Morey St Denis, Pouilly Fuisse or if you want something a little sharper Pouilly Fume
That process appears to have taken weeks, with as many as a dozen officials and lawyers aware of Mandelson’s vetting failure. Starmer’s statement would suggest he was not formally notified by any of them until a few days ago.
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
As Cyclefree says, the word 'formally' is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here.
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
Off on a cruise with Mrs BJ and 2 paid Carers later today.
My non league team @staveleymwfc are in the play offs at step 6 and should they make the final on 2.5.26 I will need to drive the WAV back from Southampton like Lewis Hamilton to make the game at either Coalville FC or Stapleford FC
Comments
But it explodes with pale violet light when turned in the hand. Amazing
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306568656741
BTW you know you can get robot mowers that do it all, now? By themselves? I was chatting about this, this very afternoon over tea in a cottage near Lisburn, by Strangford Lough, with my new friend Eileen, who makes sensational rhubarb and ginger jam
It wouldn't even need Hunt or Cleverly as Kemi could take the centre ground Starmer had and Rayner vacated, Rayner Labour wouldn't be largest party, it would likely be third, indeed maybe even 4th as the LDs would likely surge too. Indeed you could even get the LDs second to Reform if Rayner replaced Starmer
This evening I have been mostly drinking Tim Taylor's Boltmaker.
Get that down your necks.
The intellectually challenged Magnus Pike
Such is the tee-totallers lot...
Anyway (nevermind about all that politics nonsense)
I'm so sorry to hear about your Stage 4 diagnosis, Hopefully they have you on treatments that can keep this thing in check for many years to come? 🙏
Cancer is a HUGE unknown and, I think, very, very individual (much more so than most doctors will admit)
I myself have had cancer (oral) which was nothing at all.
My lovely mum had stage 1 breast cancer in 2013 and was told categorically by an oncologist of 40 years experience, that her cancer "wouldn't kill her" - Yet in January 2022 she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer that had gone through her skeleton and she died in May 2022 (officially of "pneumonia" but it was, of course, the cancer underlying everything that actually killed her)
If I could give any advice to breast cancer patients, from what I've seen, it would be this - If your cancer is in any way hormonal and you are put on a five year course of hormonal treatment (my mum did 5 years on Anastrozole from 2014 to 2019) try and continue the treatment beyond five years (even if it's for life) as frequently women will come off the hormone treatment after five years and the cancer will then re-emerge, often more aggressively unfortunately.
So sorry for going on about my own story.
Please keep us informed, Miss Cycle and I wish you all the best going forwards.
Her rhetoric is right wing
Her put down of anyone needing genuine help is right wing
Her ability to lie about everything she did prior to 2024 borders on mental disorder.
Too many skeletons in her closet, dubious law breaking, dubious educational qualifications and complete stretching of truth or credulity to call herself an engineer.
She worked in an IT call centre.
Onto more interesting / nicer things.
Delightful
Congratulations to Frank Lampard and Coventry City on their promotion to the Premier League
My last ever Twitter post is to say this is absolutely insane.
https://x.com/spajw/status/1854534070711021720?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Works out at around £1.70 a bottle.
"It's staggering. No one told me the operating procedure for the front door. Unforgivable. I've lost confidence in my team and they will have to resign".
Northern Ireland is seriously surprising me. On the upside
Lovely people. Great honest food. Magnificent scenery. Red squirrels
Nobody is buying it. He just withers away.
So you lose heat at a rate equivalent to being in still air at a lower temperature.
Basic Chem Eng heat transfer stuff.
What impressed me most is how she lived her life after diagnosis exactly the same as before. No bucket list for her but carried on knitting sea creatures, organising family parties and ferrying her daughters to after school activities. A life so well lived that nothing needed to be added apart from more of the same.
I know that we differ and have clashed on a number of issues, but one of the things that I value about PB is that this is a place where even the bitterest political disputes do not prevent us recognising our mutual humanity. Would that there would be more places like this in the world.
Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
Is there a German word for "a recklessly foolish enterprise from which you're so desperate to extricate yourself that you give in to the other side but still insist on pretending it's all been a great victory"?
https://x.com/BillKristol/status/2045243246163423275
Though Davey and the LDs would probably be the biggest winners of a Rayner Labour leadership and Polanski the biggest loser, the Tories and Reform staying roughly as they are
Donald Trump whether intentional or not, created an unprecedented divide and turmoil within Iran’s regime.
The bizarre promises he is making today on regime’s behalf has led to a state of total panic and confusion.
Even the mayor of Tehran is now openly calling out Araghchi and the upper apparatus.
Hours prior Fars News which is one of the most hardliner and pro regime publications inside the country also criticized the negotiating team and demanded answers.
From the looks of things, the cracks that were previously hidden away due to fog of war have now been exposed to the entire world.
Islamic Republic despite its posturing has never been more divided and unstable as it is in this moment of time.
I had to Google. Paragraph four's a banger.
Agree about glass. The effects you get when the light hits it can be astonishing. Noticing such small changes is what brings joy and a sort of contentment, I feel. You slow down but you are also using your senses fully. Both stretched and at rest.
I have no idea why so many revere him. All he did was write about buckets
It’s paradoxical because I actually met the guy and talked with him and Yes, he was as amiable and charming and Oirish as everyone promised. But the poems? Nope
Plath was the last great English poet (as in: English was her language). The medium of poetry died with her in that kitchen in Primrose Hill, everything since has been footnotes and tweaks and nosegays on a coffin
Same way pop music died with the death of Amy Winehouse, not far away in Camden Town
I don't intend to let this define me either. And husband is wonderful. Just a bit unimpressed with the NHS. Plus I think it is often harder for those who have to watch. But we have fun together
(PS I will continue telling you off when you're wrong, mind. 😁)
Although Arctic Monkey’s AM is brilliant too
My six year old son got a certificate at school for a poem he wrote about the sea today. Sad to hear it’s a dying art!
Of all the evenings, you’d expect this thread to be full of wild speculations about the prime minister’s impending demise (or so it seems) with bitter recriminations, gloating, backbiting etc
Instead we’ve waffled on about life, death, beer, cancer, cricket, white wine, robot lawnmowers, the potential decline of Chablis, the fate of Muscadet, cream teas, wind chill, Magnus Pyke, antique glassware, Co-op ale offers, @Cyclefree’s back garden, and @BlancheLivermore’s walk south from Brittany
All of which is oddly heartening, The PB pub is doing fine
UK~ 10 years Imprisonment
France~ 15-30 Years Imprisonment
Japan~ 5-20 Years Imprisonment
Israel~ 20 Years Imprisonment
Iran~ Death Penalty
Saudi Arabia~ Death Penalty
China~ Death Penalty
USA - Become President
https://x.com/scfcjosh96/status/2045211095401373876?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
George Orwell sequel cancelled
An Irish Airman foresees his Death
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Though for me the last lines of Marvell's To His Coy Mistress sum up the way to live -
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
But yes, re poetry. Indeed it’s not so much dying, as dead
They'll be putting their crosses in the Labour box quicker than you can say "I knew nothing".
It's pure affectation to complain about accurate reporting and spelling.
Night!
BTW I’ve just noticed Larkin died at the age of 63??? WTF? I imagined he was in his 80s. Jeez. Shudder, Etc
Maybe “lingered” is the wrong word. If you die at 63 you didn’t linger. Cripes
To conclude, I would put it this way, Larkin AND Plath were the two last great English-speaking poets, I sincerely believe we will not see any more
Seven sodding days a week,
I slave at filthy WORK, that might
Be done by any book-drunk freak.
This goes on until I kick the bucket.
FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT”
Can anyone even name a poet who deserves to be in the pantheon since them?
Maybe George Mackay Brown?
Although I think you were saying "english"?
"The old go, one by one, like guttered flames.
This past winter"
Wet bulb temperature is a different can of worms and I need to go to sleep.
Mind you in them days didn't most people?
But for Chablis, unlike many areas, I’d always say go for the big negociants like William Fevre, and get a relatively older one because they’re best when they’re a bit honeyed. And get village appellations or premier cru. The grands crus are too expensive, and the basic Chablis is often thin.
£15-25 range.
The other is montbretia, which is everywhere on road verges across West Cork. One of the rooms in the house is painted a vivid green, and another a bright orange to match the plant, and it will be a job of work to remove it from the garden, but I've decided to tackle the bamboo first. It's a really attractive flowering plant, but it seems impossible to keep under control.
Lighting our once beautiful features
We'll smile but only for seconds
For to be caught smiling is to acknowledge life
A brave but useless show of compassion
And that is forbidden in this drab and colorless world"
Paul Weller
That verse has always stuck with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS6TY7TmtHA
If you are wondering how William Shatner achieved quite such brilliance, well, Ben Folds helped a lot.
*This version of Common People opened the disco at our wedding. Filled the floor, it did.
We probably still have enough canes that were kept in good condition out of the rain to build a single span of a bridge (or some sort of flower trellis) but I'm not sure how happy I'll be to see bamboo once this process is over!
I might but some older Chablis, as an experiment - it’s interesting what you say about climate change
My last big wine revelation was Balkan wines. Moldova, FYROM and Bulgaria etc. Before that, Greek wines (even reds). Georgia was fun. I still rate Argentina as the best value wine source. I am right now drinking a brilliant Malbec from the wine shop in Ballylahinch
Argentina is where Oz and NZ were 10-20 years ago? Great wines at surprisingly good prices. Now good Aussie Shiraz or Pinot costs real money and NZ Sauvignon Blanc is in danger of overproducing and ruining the brand
As a vigneron this might interest you. I’ve been meeting Irish whiskey producers on this trip, and they are happy they are in a resurgent industry (despite falling booze intake overall, and Trump’s tariffs) but they don’t know how to sell their premium product. They want something like “single malt” which is the marketing gizmo which made high quality Scotch famously desired worldwide. They’ve tried “single pot still” but no one understands it and it hasn’t worked
Such is the booze biz. You need the salesmanship
Burnham into Parliament that year.
English wine has navel gazed over its own branding for years. I think, accidentally, it’s landed on an OK branding. It doesn’t have the appellation terroir cachet, except potentially for the crouch valley, but it maybe doesn’t need it because it manages to garner both the patriotic Tory shires market and the food miles conscious weekend daytripping woke London buyer, and carries with it the beloved posh English associations for the foreign palate of croquet, Wimbledon, downton abbey, afternoon tea and red phone boxes.
Election campaign and Tories into the high 20s no problem.
The fact Reform haven’t been able to get to the historical leads in the polls of winning parties shows this for me.
Tories have to be favourites on the basis they are the only people that can actually with evidence stop Labour.
Is it Weatherspoons is it Witherspoons
When I go there time just zooms
Start drinking at 9am
Sober up have lunch and get drunk again
You wanna go where everyone knows your name
To a a friendly pub that's part of a chain
You need a drink you need a meal
In comfortable surroundings with a classic pub feel
The menu is so extensive and the wine list is comprehensive
You can have red wine white or pink
They will even put ice in your drink
Competitive prices that cant be beat
And you never know who your gonna meet
Different conversations can be enjoyed
With doctors dentists and the unemployed
Like an old folks home if it had a bar
Full of people you probably read the star
In every major city in every major town
If you can't find a Wetherspoons your a fucking clown
Is it Weatherspoons is it Witherspoons
When I go there time just zooms
Start drinking at 9am
Sober up have lunch and get drunk again
It’s way better than “cremant” or “trentodoc” or “cava” and it will give prosecco and champagne a run for their money, esp as it improves even more
As we're talking about Larkin and not railways (for a change), here's a photo I took on Coventry station a few years ago, when return to the Premier League seemed a forlorn hope:
Larkin wasn't a sports guy.
Tony Harrison was good at poems.
There's an English-Wine-only shop in Cambridge called "Grape Britannia". Hardcore remainer owners.
Trump announces the US military will create a "new dawn" for Cuba, signaling the next military intervention for the US in short succession.
The Touchline | 𝐓
@TouchlineX
🚨 𝗡𝗘𝗪: For the first time in history, The World Cup Final will have a halftime show.
It will be organized by Chris Martin & Coldplay and could take up to 25 minutes.
https://x.com/TouchlineX/status/2045034531636543633
Here's hoping that you will beat the odds.
I assume you already know about this
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/spacex-buying-cybertrucks-bulk-tesla-114035899.html
Why is my spidey sense tingling. I detect weasel words
It’s absurd and implausible to suggest that he didn’t really know
I suspect if someone has it in for Starmer, there will be more info leaked on who knew what and when. That may not appear until after the May elections
If we are to believe everything is fine, then some of the Prime Ministers advisors are withholding information from the PM which he really should have known about months ago
My non league team @staveleymwfc are in the play offs at step 6 and should they make the final on 2.5.26 I will need to drive the WAV back from Southampton like Lewis Hamilton to make the game at either Coalville FC or Stapleford FC