Being able to react to an email with an emoji is one of the all-time great tech time savers.
Right up there with that phone feature that lets you automatically fill in verification codes.
@willwritesword.bsky.social
Lover of history, geography, bad jokes and lists. I write about most of them in rockpeoplerivers.substack.com. Here to share the best bits I learn along the way – and do a lot of learning in return.
Being able to react to an email with an emoji is one of the all-time great tech time savers.
Right up there with that phone feature that lets you automatically fill in verification codes.
Earlier this year, my very talented wife had the opportunity to do a TEDx Talk.
She decided to lay herself bare and talk about the most challenging, traumatic event in her life.
I may be very biased, but I think there’s lessons for us all in what she shared!
m.youtube.com/watch?featur...
St John's church, Glastonbury peering out of the mist. Photograph taken this morning from Glastonbury Tor on Michaelmas day.
29.09.2025 09:48 — 👍 3344 🔁 482 💬 65 📌 51We should all be allowed to hope that, like Robert Redford, when we eventually leave this world we’re remembered as:
1. Good
2. An owner of ‘weapons-grade good looks’*
*Stolen from my favourite obituary so far
What‘s popular at the moment, Gareth?
10.09.2025 12:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0With a touch of Leandro Trossard
09.09.2025 20:31 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0My life ambition!
04.09.2025 09:31 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Is ‘did this need to be a book?’ the new ‘did this need to be a meeting?’
04.09.2025 08:20 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Amazing photo!
03.09.2025 16:57 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0It doesn’t seem fair that one place can be home to a land’s best beaches and tallest mountains.
But I guess nature is famously cruel.
A large open plain, before County Kerry’s MacGillycuddy’s Reeks mountain range.
It’s said you’re either a beach person or a mountain person.
Well, I say you can also be a Kerry person and have both.
😍
02.09.2025 21:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0On our honeymoon in Kerry, my wife (still odd to say) and I accidentally stumbled on the Gap of Dunloe – the coveted mountain pass through Ireland’s ceiling.
Naturally, I got home and started writing about it substack.com/@willwritesw...
The front cover of the book, ‘Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War Two’ by Robert Kurson.
And now I’m onto this.
A slight change of direction, but I don’t know if I’ve encountered a book more up my street.
Recommended by Ryan Holiday, so already off to a very good start before getting to page one.
Is VAR football’s Brexit?
It’s made everything worse, most don’t want it anymore and yet we’re seemingly stuck with it forever 😐
A large oak tree in the middle of parkland
Tree of the day – at South London’s best kept secret, Beckenham Place Park.
17.08.2025 11:12 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Would recommend reading this twice…
04.08.2025 13:08 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0This is a real problem
24.07.2025 11:29 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0*30 seconds into the book title brainstorm
"Yeah, that'll do."
2025 has taught me that rain hits different when you have a garden.
20.07.2025 14:54 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Perhaps the greatest present a boy could get on his 32nd birthday
18.07.2025 08:45 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0‘Hog not included’
17.07.2025 18:21 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Subscribed! Looking forward to reading this
15.07.2025 07:58 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0A pride of cats!
Or technically – as I’ve just learned – a ‘clowder’
It’s cool that Vienna and Belgrade began life as Roman settlements, when the empire used the Danube as its northern frontier.
It’s cooler that, if you look at a map today, both modern cities still mostly sit on the river's southern bank – just like the Roman sites they grew from.
And it seems like 'A Philosophy of Walking' is perhaps next...
I'm already sold!
*books train to York*
*sells house*
www.theguardian.com/culture/2025...
I feel like this should be bigger news
09.07.2025 08:54 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0The Danube starting in the Black Forest and ending at the Black Sea is such a neatly-named journey.
Made even better by there being absolutely no reason for it.