Jon Courtenay Grimwood

Only if it was through an ouija board. She liked ouija boards.

Very spruce.

Not a football person, but have recently not attended a convention, and not gone across for research that I really need to do. (And I went a couple of times a year for decades.)

Unlikely stained glass window of St Columba in a sailing boat, and twice the size of everyone else, wearing a brown rope and a halo

As always, a tip of the hat to St Columba, the Irish aristocrat who exiled himself to Scotland after starting a war back home by pirating a book. Until demoted, in favour of St Andrew, he was by default Scotland's saint
#standrewsday

Black and white photograph of a young Tom Stoppard looking like a French intellectual, with shaggy hair, a cigarette, tweed jacket and a heavy roll neck.

'I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself...'

Damn.
RIP Tom Stoppard.

He had a good line in cheekbones and louchly-worn coats; wasn't bad with words either.

Possibly depends how many hours afterwards still counts as end of the meal.

Their croissant are great. I had one yesterday!

Introduce yourself with 5 animals you've seen in the wild:

Reindeer
Baboon
Cobra
White tailed eagle
Giant clam

Astonishingly. It's trump levels of word salad.

I feel Caesar and the Senate might have had an opinion on this...

It's made as hard as possible. Glad you've found someone who might work.

Punching down has turned into a real post-Blair Labour habit.

It's not how much tax goes up or doesn't, it's who the changes hit hardest that matters. And freezing the tax thresholds hit the poorest, and the party knows this.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

@endofthepier.bsky.social liked the LRB review for your book, and thought the whole piece quite good (you might have different opinions).

Gibb; “ I had no editorial role whatsoever at the Jewish Chronicle”. Lee Harpin, reporter at the paper; “RG made a habit of calling into the office on print days to check up on what stories were topping the news list, and offering a view’”

I liked when they explained to boris Johnson what brexit would mean and he said oh god that is horrible you must strike a deal. They had to explain that was the deal

He doesn't know many writers, does he?
(gods)

An absolute inability to do anything else except walk around cities at night, and I didn't have the qualifications to be a werewolf or the right clothes to be a mugger.

Well, that was dreadful from the Irish side, and I say that as a Scotland supporter.
#IREVRSA

Half past?

A cropped screenshot from a Canadian government website with the prompt "What's your occupation?" The answer "Writer" has been provided, generating the red text error response "Please enter a valid occupation."

Almost a year now since I received this absolutely classic burn from the Canadian government.

Farage can now be easily boxed in to a corner where his only ‘defence’ becomes: “Yes I spouted Kremlin propaganda & Putin worship but, unlike Nathan Gill, I didn’t need bribes to do it.”
It is, once again, a question of whether interviewers have the temerity to shut down his whining obfuscations.

That person gets parked until needed again (if ever needed again)?

Anger as Waterstones snaps up prime site on doorstep of independent bookshop UK's biggest bookselling chain under fire over plans for new store beside Edinburgh tram line.

We need your help.

@waterstones.bsky.social, without any direct communication with us, will be opening their 6th Edinburgh branch less than 100 metres from our front door at the Foot of the Walk in Leith.

Please read on for more information

www.heraldscotland.com/news/2562908...

(1/2)

Agree with all of this.

But I'd still have failed because I use, and have used, em dashes for decades, and I'd probably have written the essay from a Marxist perspective, being of that age...!

'industrial-grade Cartesian pineal-gland bollocks...'

Prof Roberts on Avatar Has A Bath, or whatever the SFX rich, plot poor second instalment was called.

The buildings were still cracked and split from the bombing where i grew up, and i lost count of the number of times i was told the bomb through the local church roof that didn't explode was as a miracle!

Now make them write it...