What weird places conference centres are. The eaves of a regional Tesco joined to what looks like a housing project in Magnitogorsk by a covered promenade from a spa town all framed by a brick arch that wouldn’t be out of place in Byzantium.

The sun is finally out here in Oxford- allowing all that stone and pinnacle to look its tarty best- but aesthetics are a poor reward for the fact it’s felt like Svalbard for 5 months.

'I gaze at those same portraits of celebrities on the walls sporting sharp haircuts who must have passed through for a trim at some point or another. George Clooney smiles at me, as if to say, ‘So, how’s your dad?’

the-fence.com/something-to-t…

There are protoplasmic amoebas lurking as yet unfound in droplets of dirty water that are of greater moral stature than Matt Hancock.

Richard I

Me, re-reading The Warden

In 2021, a friend wrote saying he was having a medical catastrophe and didn’t know if he'd make it.

He said he'd been taking finasteride, a baldness drug that thousands of men say has caused them devastating side effects.

This is my friend’s story:

economist.com/1843/2024/04/0…

With all the tendency to import American cultural norms, it’s nice to see the Yanks copying us for a change. Barely a week went by in my childhood on the south coast without an insurance related pier fire.

They DID steal our eleven days.

Sensational work from the Environment Agency, who have named their anti-fish theft operation after Psalm 104.

‘So is the great and wide sea also… and there is that Leviathan: whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.’