Tim of York

Scene of autumn foliage over a mossy lake, reds and orange leaves.

A little girl in pink riding a scooter along a path, autumnal leaves all around her.

Autumn is the loveliest season.

Thoughts and prayers to all the parents whose kids didn’t get the memo about daylight savings and are now faced with an extra hour of parenting before bedtime.

And prayers for me, whose toddler started chattering at an unconscionable 3.40 am.

It‘s an emotional rollercoaster. When we’re up, we’re up, and when we’re down, we’re down.

To be fair, if my job was cleaning up after a nervous rhinoceros in a previous life I’d probably still feel queasy a few incarnations later.

(30 years ago)

ADULT: Careful with the Internet, whatever you say is there FOREVER

KID: My Geocities page about Discworld will be a monument for eternity

(5000 years ago, Sumeria)

SCRIBE 1: Think anyone in the future will ever read this temple inventory on a clay tablet

SCRIBE 2: Lol fuck no

I read it as an undergrad and I don’t think any ancient work has had such an emotional impact on me since. As a modern you want to yell at her ‘say the words, sprinkle the incense, go live your life with your child!’
But then you listen to her values and her voice. It’s so moving.

Every single English person seeing Tim Tams for the first time: ‘oh, they’re the same as Penguins’

English person eating their first Tim Tam, a tear rolling down their cheek: I did not know that such biscuity perfection was possible, my life was incomplete until this moment

Congratulations! Although I misread the description as the ‘authorised biography’ of Offa and was very impressed.

Can’t beat Opeth!

Email from the Labour Party begging me to rejoin to combat the threat of Reform.

The absolute bloody cheek, after months of throwing trans people under the bus and a week of outright pandering to racist rhetoric on immigrants, for Labour to ask me to come back to help combat Nigel Farage.

Yes, you can more or less see Bamburgh castle from Lindisfarne - but isn't that the point? That the king in his castle is forced to consider the saint in his cell every time he looks out from the battlements. To protest somewhere truly isolated would be like shouting "fuck the patriarchy" in a penguin colony.

This is a brilliant line!

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Honestly, I agree! £20 is a big chunk of change for a lot of people.
But I always feel obliged to point out in discussions over cathedrals charging that these are actually quite cash-poor institutions and there’s no easy answer to how to keep them standing.

Jumping in because I used to work there: yes, it’s shit.
OTOH, there’s no charge to pray or worship.
There’s also the fact that 95% of visitors are tourists, the place costs a horrific amount to maintain, and there’s no central government or CoE funding for cathedrals.

Thanks very much! I’ve listened to @allieinchains.bsky.social newest, it is amazing.

I can feel my ankle breaking just looking at that.

Small world! Yeah, been living here for about 12 years. Grew up on Australia, came to Eoforwic to do an MA and just… never left. It’s a great town, incredible heritage.

Oh you certainly may, I’ve got an amazing list of bands going here, any others welcome!

Ok that is some serious hype, I will definitely check them out!

Wow, thanks for the list! Just put my girls to bed, time to dive in

Holy shit this rocks!

Any recommendations? Serious question, would love to check out some BM outside of my Spotify recommends.

Been going to the gym for 2 months now, having never gone before.

One thing I’ve learnt: if an exercise has the word Romanian, Russian or Bulgarian in the title, you’re about to fucking die.

The ‘Doctor’s Handwriting Bend’?

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Reading Going Postal at the moment and it’s hillarious! You’ll be glad to know your QOTD’s got me back into Discworld after a very long hiatus.

I was surprised when my wife was pregnant to find out that orange juice has the same amount of alcohol as super low-strength beer (0.5%)!

I wonder if the prevalence of low alcohol drinks among working people meant the abstinence campaigners had to spell out ‘yes we really do mean ALL alcohol?’

The Pledge of the Preston Abstinence Society in 1832 reads “We agree to abstain from all liquors of an intoxicating quality, whether ale, porter, wine, or ardent spirits, except as medicines”, ‘ardent spirits’ presumably being distilled and the same as ‘strong liquors’? So small beer ok, whisky bad?