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My partner recently moved into a boat and discovered that firewood can be obtained from Log Man John. This has led to intense speculation about the powerful Man-John family’s grip on modern life. Neither of us has yet dared enquire after his (presumed) brother, Scat.

Got kettled tonight for the first time in ages. Really scary clash between police and protesters at one point.

Fool. Beloved fool.

Celebrating three years of very uncomplicated joy and companionship today. It’s been sweet and hot and very funny. Long may it last.

Yes, *this is the moment* in history to start watering down legal protections against hate speech. Incredible.

Oh, this is glorious.

This, from the Quakers, is worth reading. It's a serene, confident, utter rebuke of the hate and fear that's peddled by Sex Matters. The last two pages are smokin'. If you're on the wrong side of the Quakers, you really need to sit down and have a good chat with yourself.

I sometimes worry that if I were to ever transition, I would look like JD Vance.

Ten years sans booze today. Not uncoincidentally, it would also have been S’s 60th. The last few weeks have been very full of her, somehow.

Madam, On checking my diaries, I discover that I weighed just under ten stone in 2015, at the time the Gender Recognition Act came into law. Far from being erased, as John Boyne would have it, there appears to be considerably more of me today. I wholeheartedly support the rights of transgender people to live their best, authentic lives and, as a woman who has been a feminist since the 1970s, I know that this does not affect my rights in any way. The 10,000 people who marched at Trans and Intersex Pride in Dublin last month would seem to agree. The “greatest sin of our time” is not transphobia but, as so often in our past, the failure to believe women when we tell you who we are. Bernie Linnane Dromahair, Co. Leitrim.

Sunday Independent...

I just told my mum that Tom Lehrer had died, aged 97, and she responded “taken too soon”. I’m inclined to agree.

I will not support any UK party in 2025 that does not explicitly state its support for the rights of transgender people. This party does not yet meet this criterion.

I have just eaten two perfectly ripe plums from the fridge and have concluded that William Carlos Williams can not be held responsible for his crimes.

they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

It does not.

I still haven’t actually checked the weather…

I came to the kitchen to check the weather this weekend. And then played the concertina, went for a shower and set the dishwasher running. The fact that I do not have an ADHD diagnosis is both a miracle and a triumph of a system designed to be too labyrinthine for anyone with ADHD to get diagnosed.

Twelve years since Sheila left. Someone smarter than me recently called her “a universe in a person” and she was.

Spotify has just served up the Turtles’ Elenore, which contains some of the finest “will this do?” lyrics ever written. “You’re my pride and joy, etcetera” and “I really think you’re groovy: let’s go out to a movie” live in my head rent-free.

Arguably, this kind of behaviour is why I am now plagued by Bees.

There is a cherry on my kitchen floor. It has been there for a couple of days. It is so beautiful, gleaming, dark, against the pale blue of my floor, that I can’t bear to clean it up.

Young Lucy Dacus really is bloody marvellous. Quite glad that I was at that gig with child 2 and not GnR with child 1, though he seems to have had a good time.

JK Rowling here advocating the harassment and abuse and public shaming of anyone going to the toilet who doesn’t immediately conform to her prescriptive standards of what a man or woman looks like.

Apparently this would have been clearer if she’d noticed the inflatable seagull.

Child 2: There were so many Union Jacks up in the canteen that I had to check if WW3 had broken out. Turned out it was just fish and chips day.

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Brain: are neuticles still a thing?

Internet: there’s merch.

neuticles.com/product/neut...

For anyone who’s ever wondered what happens if you put fig leaf syrup into coffee, I can confirm that it rides the thin boundary between pleasant/weird and unpleasant/weird incredibly tightly.

They’re there because it’s a complex operation to get the speaker out if you haven’t got string tied round it. Very high tech, my place.

Close up of the interior of an enamelled gramophone horn with a modern speaker in it. Along with a surprising (non-zero) amount of pasta and sauce.

This morning’s passive aggressive text to the children:

I should not have to have a house rule that the person responsible for cleaning bolognese out of the gramophone horn is the person responsible for putting it in there. And yet…

It is absolutely intolerable that the Labour Government has another committed transphobe as their preferred candidate as new head of the EHRC.

I rather doubt that the Women's and Equalities Committee has even been consulted.

Thirdly: what the actual fuck?