Nick Stewart

And bsky.app/profile/dani...

US considers banning Bhutanese from travelling to US. The rest of the list is as expected, but Bhutan? Seems… quixotic.

St Paul’s looking handsome in the sun.

Spring!

Christ. An evening that truly puts the doom in doomscrolling. Which I now know is an acceptable Apple typeahead. It gets worse…

So, just to clarify, the president of the USA wants to ethnically cleanse land many people consider sovereign in order to build a hotel. Is that about right?

Going through a US procurement process and filling in this little bit of ancient history /s

a tiny teeny green baby lumpfish on top of a finger

Have you never seen a baby Lumpfish? Well, today is your lucky day!

An NHS efficiency tale: I called my GP for an appt yesterday morning, I saw her later the same day. Got a referral for an x-ray, went to the hospital first thing and was home an hour later. Results in a week.

The NHS is amazing. It has major challenges but let’s not forget the good stuff.

Back of red double decker bus with chinese writing in the dust of the lower window

Chinese bus back graffiti. Wld love to know what it says.

About time too. Three cheers all round!

Or just sliced up with a kris

It’s December 30th and all that’s left in the festive larder is a single packet of mad Christmas crisps

U wot m8?

I just bought this year’s Christmas Negroni makings. I absolutely must not finish them by the 24th like I did last year. And the year before…

Monzo Unwrapped is an understandable attempt of the bank to ‘build a relationship’ with its customers, but ends up being a paean to C21st digital consumerism. Icky, and makes me want to spend nothing at all, which I doubt is what they had in mind.

A tradition of ours is to go to Borough Market before Christmas for treats. It’s awful, no one enjoys it, but we persevere for the massively overpriced and over-truffled everything. Good times.

Sign of the times: a billboard ad in Chinese announcing a super car carwash in Battersea. Poor photography from a moving car.

I bought the Christmas makings for Negronis last 20/12. Gin, Campari, vermouth, one bottle of each, plus some oranges. All gone by 24/12. I am still ashamed.

My kids also played this. I think I’d better turn them in, just to be on the safe side.

The forweord to a history book that begins "I understand you're looking for a 3000-word foreword for your book that ...", obviously written by ChatGPT

The cover of a book called THE SEIGE THAT SHOCKED BRITAIN - London's Iranian Embassy, 1980, by Diane Fairweather. The image is black and white and shows a figures in combat gear looking out of a window.

I'm not saying that AI-written books are becoming a problem on Amazon, but here is the first page of a new book on the 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege.

Yuck

Pulling into Brixton directly facing the nearest to the escalators of the three walkways leading to them makes me feel in awe of my own talents.

Terry Pratchett was great. This is a Universal Truth. But if I see one more person saying something grand about the economics of boots I’m complaining to Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Please can you take the foxes as well?

We just got one in Streatham too. South London is getting literarier by the day.

Also, blue birds! Hundreds of them. Again, nice and all, but where are the buggers from?

This is a system problem. I have many, many photos of the moon. They’re nice and all but I’ve never been terribly interested in the moon and similarly I can’t make them stop.

Try Exit Strategy by The Clockworks. Barely there on Spotify, great concept album, and a recommendation from my very music-obsessed daughter Tilly. Good in all sorts of ways.