Laura Ashe

"I'm sorry but we've run out of flowers"

Yep, that's him! He's unstoppable

He's an omni-connoisseur

A smug-looking cat

Me thinking about Gorton and Denton

Note that the centre/left/progressive vote was 24997, with the hard right vote at 11284

Gorton and Denton for the insomnia win (also the massive hope, optimism, hell yes win)

God, my watch died during a run and that didn't even occur to me

Exactly! "Nothing to see here..."

Nah, they'd only take one of them

That's how they get us, dammit

Sky programme title Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough

This programme title seems a bit insulting and also threatening

Punctuation education is at a low ebb

Two cats have jumped onto a sash window and climbed up under the blind, dislodging it

Working from home proving more stressful than I feel is necessary

I mean if he wasn't following me then what the hell was he doing in Rome

I know what you're going to say but Derek is a master of disguise

A seagull called Derek perched on top of a restaurant icanopy in front of the Pantheon in Rome

This is my seagull. He's called Derek. He follows me everywhere.

Love watching cats encountering new objects to sniff and going through the endless cat choice game of "Eat/Bat/Bury"

Shot of Strandhotel Cadzand-Bad, taken from the barnacle-encrusted groyne on the beach. Grey sky, windy, chilly

Winter seaside breaks are the BUSINESS

A cream cat (Merrill) is curled up with and has his paw over a brown cat (Wyatt) who appears to have sunk into a pool of relaxed fur

Wyatt appears to have liquefied

That was the windswept Netherlands coast! Gorgeous hotel with a pool and sauna. Now in Bruges feeling smug about life

I mean, we survived

Darkness and blue; a straight unmarked road; a building lit up in the distance

The walk to the restaurant last night

Leaning out of my hotel window over a canal with tall houses and a tower in the background

Me looking like I've been photoshopped onto Bruges

Black and white sea bird taking off over waves at a groyne on the beach at Cadzand-Bad

Who is this cool guy in the North Sea? Species will do, but tell me his name if you know it

Coastal path above grassy dunes and a beach under a grey sky. Slightly gothic hotel visible in the distance

Charmingly austere coastal Netherlands run; hotel in the distance has the most amazing breakfast buffet I've ever seen, which *almost* made up for the massive headwind on the way back

Academics *literally have nowhere else to go*, and UK employment law and standard employer expectations do not account for that. You'd need to take 20 years' pay to make it worth quitting. Unless, ofc, they coincidentally also make your job unbearable and undoable. Oh I see

For me it's like someone is pressing my solar plexus. It's weird it took us all so long to get over Descartes

The Exterminating Brexit The British Road to Ruin

My substack newsletter on Brexit, political folly and the yawning horror of a Reform government.

open.substack.com/pub/mattcarr...

Two cats on a chair; one lying down in a pretty traditional way; one sprawled on his back with one leg sticking out

The cat is relaxed

Shot of my g&t on a table by a coal fire in the determinedly old fashioned Star Inn in Bath

Shot of my pint and novel by the wood fire in the Harcourt Arms, Oxford

Real fire old fashioned pub crawl