Whenever Antiques Roadshow is on the telly my favourite people are the ones who proudly say their grandmother worked as a maid in some big country house and was given this nice bit of VERY EASILY CONCEALABLE silver as a token of appreciation by the lord and lady of the manor.
In other news a guy on the train was playing loud music on his phone without headphones and when he got off the train THE POLICE ARRESTED HIM. Presumably for something else, mind, but it was still deeply satisfying.
I mean, the Brambly Hedge books are about a bunch of imaginary anthropomorphic mice who live in elaborate tiny houses carved out of tree stumps... so I'm not *entirely* surprised this topic wasn't covered.
Personally, if I had assumed my pension was going to start at 60 and I was relying on that money and I'd not bothered to check any of the details about it... and then it did not in fact start at 60? I would be too embarrassed to tell ANYONE, EVER, let alone the national press.
Personally, if I did not have the permanent right to remain in a country I would not do something that obviously might get me deported then be shocked when the government deports me.
Okay so unexpectedly terrible things awaited the visitors to the Glasgow Willy Wonka thing and several children went home traumatised... and you people maintain this somehow *wasn't* an authentic Willy Wonka experience??? 🤔
I see loads of This Sort Of Post doing the rounds and every so often there's a real shocker but in the main: I think you people are all kidding yourselves about how young you actually look.
Now THIS is how you do customer service when someone has been bereaved. The woman I spoke to at
@thetimes
was incredibly helpful & efficient but also KIND & HUMAN, we chatted about how hard it is to lose your parents, and even the confirmation email is personal & thoughtful.
My dad died late last night.
Three weeks after this, and just five or six weeks after he started feeling a bit under the weather.
So fast they didn't even get the chance to identify exactly what kind of cancer it was.
So my dad had a blood test yesterday and FIRST THING THIS MORNING the surgery rang to book him in for a doctor's appointment this afternoon, and when we got there it was with a highly competent senior member of permanent staff not some random locum and 🚨🚨🚨
Standardised British post boxes were all in fact originally painted green to blend into the environment unobtrusively, but they were too hard to spot... so the Post Office spent ten years gradually repainting them all red.
This is one of my favourite international street furniture quirks: when Britain colonised Ireland, they instituted British Royal Mail, complete with ciphered boxes. When Ireland gained freedom, it would’ve been expensive to replace all the boxes, so they just… painted them green
Obviously my main question this morning is: which Etsy shop did Meghan Markle buy her custom jam jar labels from? Followed closely by: I wonder what else she late night shops from there?
Not sure what day of Museum Discourse it is, but we should liven things up by discussing how many people in fancy museum jobs went to private schools and Oxbridge and are now lecturing the rest of us about "privilege".
Bought an incomplete but ABSOLUTELY BLOODY MASSIVE collection of BBC period dramas on DVD today so that's our evening plans pretty much sorted until Christmas.
The actual facts of this (not the disingenuous version in Monbiot's piece) are just the most textbook example of FUCKING AROUND followed by FINDING OUT.
Like, he's not Robin Hood, FFS, and he didn't get a prison sentence for "raising a voice"... he pulled a dangerous stunt that prevented people getting to work, hospital appointments, funerals, weddings, etc!
@NoreenMasud
You've gotta get this added to your staff blurb on the department website. "Noreen knows nothing whatsoever about Postcolonial Theory but would like everyone to have a long hard think about why they keep assuming she specialises in it".
@drrachelhewitt
"your husband, without realising it, keeps reverting to type" I THINK HE PROBABLY DOES REALISE ACTUALLY.
Also the suggestion that the reason she's so annoyed by this is that she may be perimenopausal and should try HRT to solve the issue??!??
Packing parcels and I'm frankly delighted to have included not only Henry VIII and ALL SIX WIVES but also a Hampton Court postage stamp! Nerdily satisfying.
How did MoneySavingExpert grow from me alone in my living room spending £80 on it to one of the UK’s biggest websites?
To celebrate the site’s 20th year, we hope you enjoy watching this special new film about MSE’s history…
To be clear: if you think a protest like this is what is necessary, that's fine, but you have to recognise that actions have consequences & be prepared to face them!
"You know that film The Purge, yeah? We should do that but 24/7, 365 days a year! This would be very good for society and everyone in it! I am very progressive and intelligent!!!"
Or, in this specific example, get someone in your group who WON'T RISK BEING DEPORTED away from their partner and step-children to climb up the bridge *instead of you*.
Absolutely baffling to me that "funny" is not in this list. What kind of overly serious, unfunny crowd is Ian following on twitter dot com that caused him to not include "funny" in this list.
@ItsDanSheehan
Yeah I literally run my entire business via the internet and my computer and I read this and was like "I SHOULD RETRAIN AS A CARPENTER OR A PLUMBER OR SOMETHING"
@BertDalziel
He clearly wants her to sit in the chair and nurse the baby in it just like his mum did him which she *clearly* does not want to do, thus imo using the decor as a polite but firm excuse.
WHY ARE YOU ALL DUNKING ON THAT WOMAN BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T LIKE THE NEW QUALITY STREET WRAPPERS??? THE NEW WRAPPERS ARE BLEAKLY DEPRESSING, THE OLD ONES A NOSTALGIC TREAT, THESE ARE JUST FACTS, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.
Is Tesco just a massive company out to make as much money as possible for their shareholders? Yes.
Is this still a very nice thing for them to have in store at Christmas? Also YES.
Just found a file on my dad's computer in which he's prepared notes for us "girls" about probate and exactly what paperwork he filed when my mum died and OF COURSE he wrote that for us, OF COURSE HE DID 💕
I'm very much still in COPING AND GETTING SHIT DONE mode, which I'm glad about because there'll be lots of things to organise. My dad was knocked sideways when my mum died so I did all the death-admin & funeral stuff then. Awful having to do it again, but I know I *can* do it.
(cw: suicide)
I have just seen a huge thread of people who thought that Sylvia Plath *put her head in the oven and cooked herself to death* and honestly what are they teaching young people in schools these days that so many of them have come to this bananas conclusion.
An additional fun postal fact is that noone is sure what exact shade of green used to be the official colour. Pre-standardisation the boxes were made locally and often repainted with whatever was available. And the remaining green boxes have been repainted a LOT since the 1850s!
@SamuelVimes10
Also not sure it was the ruling elites who were inconvenienced by being stuck in traffic unable to get to work, having to climb up and attempt to safely remove the protestors, etc.
What other world problems can we try to solve by destroying works of art? 🤔 Fix the cost of living crisis by setting fire to some Picassos? End racism by shredding some toddlers' finger paintings?? Let's brainstorm this, I think it really has legs.
I am firmly of the opinion that all dogs either have jobs (like lovely Bess here) or 100% believe that they do. Cats meanwhile are spoiled trust fund babies with hobbies.
What if, instead of getting up and finishing my Important Tasks I just stay sitting on the stairs in my coat with one shoe off and one still on, staring into space for several hours?
Watching Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World and Jeff Goldblum just said a visit to the island isn't a wild goose chase but a visit to "the only place in the world where the geese chase YOU"... dialogue written by someone who has *clearly* never encountered a goose.
@danwaterfield
No you see Dan this makes perfect sense, rich people deliberately cluster in places which are impossible to reach unless you - *check notes* - take readily available modes of public transport.
Obviously there are and always have been some people who look prematurely aged but lots of this is, imo, people being "fooled" by male-pattern baldness, old fashioned haircuts, and often bone structure. Plus the prevalence of VERY FLATTERING CAMERA TECHNOLOGY these days.
Getting riled up by people's bad charity shop opinions!!!
"They get their stock for free; act accordingly"
Because sure there are no costs to running a charity shop, are there? No rent or energy bills or wages or taxes? Or, you know, an important cause to raise money for???
The hospital officially switched my dad to a palliative care pathway today (ceasing treatment and focusing on pain management and comfort in his final days).
Then we got home to find the first of this year's Christmas cards from his friends, none of whom know yet.
My dad died a few days ago, it's a couple of weeks until Christmas, and my period just started out of nowhere so OBVIOUSLY I am having a whole box of chocolate seashells for breakfast. WHY WOULD I NOT BE.
Our dear sweet Tess ate some chocolate and is in care of the emergency vet overnight.
Please pray for her if you're that way inclined, and help share this post so I can raise some money to pay the vet's bill.
25% off EVERYTHING in my shop:
The Museum of London rebranding and choosing as their logo not a pigeon (fine, sure, why not a pigeon, lots of people associate London with pigeons) but A PIGEON WHO HAS JUST SHAT ON THE GROUND, because it's SYMBOLIC OF THE CITY'S DUALITY or something...? GENUINELY BEYOND PARODY.
The
@LDN_Museum
has a new logo: a pigeon and a splat of fresh guano. How unedifying. Yet apparently it “communicates something important about London. Over time people will come to recognise the pigeon and splat as signifiers of London Museum and everything it stands for”. 😵💫
This is a GOLDEN time to build a second hand DVD collection. Charity shops are full of them, cheap as chips, and a bookshelf full of films and TV shows you love and can watch whenever you want is infinitely better than being in thrall to the whims of the streaming services.
I’m being deadly serious when I say amassing a collection of 60 dvds from various charity shops over the last 6 months has been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made
Labour should announce they'll make it illegal for online shops not to tell you which courier service they use before you checkout, no more "oh god it's coming by bloody EVRI" moments, instant vote winner right there.
Also god bless the people who post comparisons like "this ancient-looking person is the same age as Tom Cruise in the latest Mission Impossible!!!" as if Tom Cruise naturally (non surgically, non CGI) looks like that at his age. You sweet summer children.
They've gotta start adding the really important stuff to dating profiles - are you a Big Light person? do you believe in expiry dates? please upload photographs of how you hang laundry and fill a dishwasher!
This older woman on this flight next to me just pulled out her knitting so I pulled out my knitting and started talking to her about it and she could not have been less interested. She's now wearing earplugs. Not even headphones to listen to music. Earplugs.
you BAN max? you ban him from the delicious forbidden library like a common criminal? oh! oh! jail for the librarian! jail for the librarian for One Thousand Years!!!!
This was created by artist Cornelia Parker to celebrate the 800th anniversary - most of the text was stitched by prisoners, with particular words & phrases stitched by people like Edward Snowdon, the director of Liberty, & Jarvis Cocker (who stitched the words "Common People").
@BradfemlyWalsh
I have! This is absolutely something they would feature, though I feel a pit of plastic balls to play in is probably too stimulating for a true Werner Herzog toy range regardless of the colour!