_Celtic_

Hurrah! I'll be sure to check it out, especially now I see there's the chance of "einer exklusiven Spielrunde"! Hopefully see you there.

Do you have a new game coming out at Spiel?

See you at Spiel?

What I Am Telling You, Jessica, Is That Those Chickens Are Fine By K.T. Landon                               &n…

So sorry to hear this. I hope you feel better with every new day that comes.
I like this, and hope it helps a little - "What I Am Telling You, Jessica, Is That Those Chickens Are Fine" by KT Landon newohioreview.org/2023/02/23/w... -fine/

Cut and paste into a single Keep Note is the best I could do. I do that a lot so I really do hope you're not pre-announcing its death knell 🙈

Tree roots with giant fungus

@mushroomjenja.bsky.social

Plenty of other trees around but no other fungi, just this giant

A favourite, though not well known, is Michael Schacht's Mogul. Worth seeking out.

'Armed Policing - Firearm discharges 2022/23 - Scotland' Monthly figures from April to March - all showing zero... apart from September, which records "3 (in relation to destruction of animal)".

Ditto for Scotland. Definite upsides.

It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable The copy of the Monterey paper here mentioned is probably the Monterey Californian of 11 November 1879, containing RLS’s article ‘San Carlos Day’ signed ‘The Monterey Barbarian’, and repulished in …

Fuller version at The Letters & Travels of Robert Louis Stevenson share.google/d3Z1qh8PVXuT...

Letter to Edmund William Gosse
Monterey, California, 15th November 1879

"It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable... the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters, multiplying, spreading, making one happy through another and bringing forth benefits."
Robert Louis Stevenson

@bluejo.bsky.social unexpected mention of Petrach in today's Tour de France commentary - apparently he was the first to climb Mount Ventoux.
Or the first to record it at least.

= Dutch courage?

Chinese whispers is, or at least used to be, a common phrase in the UK; also a children's game. Never heard of an Irish goodbye though.

Statistics from BBC website showing that 59.7% of patients in England waited less than 18 weeks for treatment in December 2024, while 68% of patients in Scotland waited less than 18 weeks - 3% higher than the target set by the UK Government for NHS England next year.

UK Government target for next year is for NHS England to be 3% behind last year's NHS Scotland performance.

This is worse than when he tweeted "Well done Boris" after the 2019 election. Mind you, he played Sun City back in the day, so never a beacon of light.

On an almost completely unrelated matter, have you ever looked into the links between the Ensign Ewart pub and the iconic Edinburgh resident it's named after?

Thanks for reposting - I missed it the first time round. For all it's virtues, Bluesy's approach means you usually only get one chance to see a posting before the tide of posts carries it downstream out of reach.

@talking-upscotland.bsky.social any comparative figures for Scotland?

Definitely a complement.

And @auntiestuds.bsky.social Kate Charlesworth, both FRSE

I've been around the block and don't think I'm taken in by too much but it'd be good to know what you consider 101 to check if I'm missing anything that should be obvious

Malka Older - The Mimicking of Known Successes. Also Inspector Peter Carmichael in Jo Walton's Farthing, as best I can recall.

A view of two of Edinburgh's city centre volcanos from the third.

Those buildings were a bonded warehouse and the tracks a private railway used to move the whisky barrels to and from the docks but they're now unused. Some of the old tracks are covered - for safety I assume - by the shiny material. Maybe because they were removed?

I was told, or maybe read, that the title deeds had to be changed when the Mungo took over the school to allow Catholics to enter. Those deeds would make a nice display item for the new museum.

stories that rise from the dust and whirl defiantly into the wind, refusing to die; stories sharp enough to cut ourselves on, and others that bring us back from the brink.

I love this novella so fiercely. Nghi Vo truly has a voice unlike any other, and I already yearn for more."

- queer love — how cruel, how unbearably and profoundly tender
- the power of stories: stories that slip like sand held in a curled palm, uncontainable;
stories like treasures from sunken ships the waves left behind, returning;

"Can I interest you in:

- a non-binary cleric with little sense of self-preservation and the misfortune of being tragically curious
- a girl, a mammoth, and a lance
- scholar/apex predator slow-burn sapphic courtship (and they were wives!)
- the inherent homoeroticism of reading poetry out loud

My book alarm is set for October and 'A Mouthful of Dust' by the brilliant Ngih Vo, about cleric Chih of the Singing Hills.

This review, by chai on goodreads, of a previous book in the series 'When The Tiger Came Down The Mountain', which I've only just finished, explains why better than I can: