Scott Dougal

Long German word for the laptop-in-the-front/pants-in-the-back rucksack favoured by hybrid workers who overnight in London.

Long German word for someone who lives in the north but works in London, trying to dress weather-appropriately for both.

Play up the Glasgow Rangers.

“Would you like to discuss the price, perchance?”

No - Martin Chuzzlewit - I would not. Not if you’re going to use that sort of language.

Delirium (feat. Mark E. Smith)

Oh hiya Mark. Been far?

open.spotify.com/track/4uIXvy...

YouTube video by UnAmericanBandstand Woody Guthrie~ All You Fascists Bound To Lose

Happy Friday.

youtu.be/VwcKwGS7OSQ?...

I’m available to do a tight 10 minutes on why O’Neill’s team selection for Stuttgart was actually a strategic error ahead of the Old Firm game?

Lowry returns to Berwick as giant sand artwork appears on Spittal beach A striking 80ft sand artwork inspired by L.S. Lowry was created in the very place that once inspired the artist’s original sketch of the Northumberland coast.

Also, did you see this Brian?

www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/people/...

And bonnie Berwick.

Oddly, and I did art A-level at Berwick High School, I don’t recall Lowry ever being mentioned when I was growing up there.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Could have read another 200 pages of this book set late 20th/early 21st century Pakistan.

Squeezes a state-of-the-nation into a sharp 340 pages and leaves you wanting more. And you’ll never care so much about cucumber farming.

#BookSky

This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Could have read another 200 pages of this book set late 20th/early 21st century Pakistan.

Squeezes a state-of-the-nation into a sharp 340 pages and leaves you wanting more. And you’ll never care so much about cucumber farming.

#BookSky

On the principle that doing any exercise is better than doing no exercise, if it gets people off the metaphorical sofa, reading-wise, then I think it’s grand.

As a recovering English lit graduate, it took me years to realise I could read whatever I want. Now read more of all kinds of books.

Thanking the Lord (literally) for hot cross buns.

Getting Away With It on in Tescos. For the mams and dads, no doubt.

Bet Richard Butler is raging when that happens to him.

Any half decent comms professional will say same - great communications doesn’t start with what you say, it starts with how you act in the public arena.

Yep. Very often women, very often younger reporters.

Great example of the ‘confessional reporting’ which some papers encourage and which feels pretty exploitative of journalists who might be hanging on to paid work by their finger nails.

Feels particularly problematic when - unlike this example - it’s clearly a reporter trying to catch a break.

Yellow label tapas from Waitrose
Listening to Clyde Superscoreboard
In a west London Travelodge

🎶 that’s living all right 🎶

Indeed.

(Btw - it’s me that harps on about bins on Facebook).

I start to think
And then I sink
Into the paper
Like I was ink.

“Never mind kids. I know Granny’s dead but now we can experience her harping on about bins on Facebook for all eternity.”

Great header Youssef, you big enigma you.

Get. In.

Baltic by Oliver Moody

Overview of a region with growing geopolitical significance.

The first part, potted histories and contemporary insights of each Baltic state, is great.

The second part, about what a conflict with Russia might look like, is more speculative and less satisfying.

#BookSky

Tbf it was a legitimate question.

My eyes watered as I tried to maintain my Presbyterian dignity…

But the one that crushed me:

I used to have zero up the back and sides, grade two on top. One day, the barber listens to this, looks at my rapidly balding heid and says: “Is it worth it?”

Hung the washing out and everything.

Blue skies over Democratic Socialist South Yorkshire.

First time I had my nose hairs done, the boy didn’t tell me what he was doing.

Me, thinking as I watch him twirl hot wax around two cotton buds: “Interesting. Wonder what that’s for?”

Next thing: bang, up the nose.