This came up, from 11 years ago, in my Photos app

I was going to a work thing in Eastleigh, which I think was Benny Hill’s birthplace

The fact that the road named in his honour is called Benny Hill Close makes it sound like it might be a warning.

I like a good , flowery political metaphor, and this is a particularly vivid one, from Andrew Rawnsley

“Rather than scotch Reform, going early flushed out Nigel Farage to play the role of smirking fire ship smashing into the side of the creaking Tory hulk.”

www.theguardian.com/commentis…

Scotland fans win the European Championships of singing, by some distance ⚽

A friend who is a painter and decorator introduced one of his colleagues as a ‘brother of the brush’

I thought that was cool

Songwriter Mike Stoller was in a mid-Atlantic ship collision in the 1950s. He abandoned ship into a ‘broken life boat’, and was eventually picked up by a cargo boat

Stoller’s writing partner, Jerry Lieber, met him when he landed back in the US, and said that they had a hit with Hound Dog. Stoller said ‘With Big Mama Thornton’? No, said Lieber, it’s some white kid

Stoller tells the story better than I do - podcasts.apple.com/qa/podcas…

I may be a 1970s throwback……but the idea that there could be any debate about that being offside seems crazy to me ⚽

Some nice solstice pictures from the Stones and elsewhere

www.theguardian.com/world/gal…

I’m wondering if opposition coaches tell their teams that England will always drop away after they’ve scored ⚽

I have one thing to say today, and it’s this.

‘Get Over You’ is a better song than ‘Teenage Kicks’.

Get Over You by The Undertones songwhip.com/the-under…

Well….I like it!

‘Pile of old wood’: Salisbury residents say sculpture spoils cathedral view - www.theguardian.com/artanddes…

I’m listening to Rolling Stone’s The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History. It’s good fun

Coincidentally I was scrolling through Wikipedia’s list of Chelsea managers, as you do, and it struck me that binning Anceolotti and recruiting AVB might be one of the Worst Decisions in Football History

I hope the blackberry berries are as prolific as the blackberry flowers are this year

As Dickens almost said, of all the good old days in the good old year, fixture list day is one of my favourites

Chelsea’s 2024/25 Premier League fixtures announced - www.chelseafc.com/en/news/a…

Allez les bleus!

Don’t vote for the far right, French sports stars urge public

www.theguardian.com/world/art…

All good, in general, and I’ll be able to get another couple of years out of it

I found that:

• I had to run the installer twice before it worked

• gpodder picked up all my subscriptions from gpodder.net, which was handy, because I’d forgotten to export the opml

• I had to log out and back in again to get gpodder to save to the folder I specified

• Spotify seems identical. I use custom order, which I wasn’t expecting to be there in the Linux version….I’m wondering whether it’s actually the windows version running under wine

• it’s a shame PSClock won’t run

• I installed the Mate desktop…I very much prefer that to the default Ubuntu one

• I haven’t got gvim set up yet

• or VS Code

• or any powershell stuff beyond installing it

……but it’s all good

I couldn’t really see the point of playing so many long, aerial balls against a team so particularly big and so particularly physical as Serbia…..but a win’s a win by any other name, I suppose ⚽

So far, so ok-ish

The BBC guys seem to be wearing rose-tinted glasses ⚽

Three different players beginning with B have scored so far

Broja has just got to score ⚽

From a bit in last week’s Times in which various writer-y types recommend books for the new Prime Minister (I hope)

The last thing the next prime minister should do is to read a book about political history. He’ll draw all the wrong lessons - they always do - then spend the next five years worrying about how he’ll be remembered. Since one of the most important political assets is a sense of humour, he’d be much better off with PG Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters, a valuable reminder that behind the stern façade of even the most formidable politician, there lurks the potential proprietor of a lingerie shop.

Dominic Sandbrook historian and columnist

I got an alert from the BBC just now.

It alerted me to the fact that I can now discover who Chesney Hawkes, Nina Nesbitt and Aitch think will win Euro 2024

I wonder what Lord Reith would have made of it?

Euro 2024 winners? Chesney Hawkes, Nina Nesbitt and Aitch have their say - www.bbc.com/sport/foo…

Words I like - The Limerick Rake

“Now there’s some say I’m foolish, there’s some say I’m wise, Though being fond of the women I think is no crime. Sure the son of King David, he had ten thousand wives, And his wisdom was highly regarded.”

Limerick Rake by Ronnie Drew - songwhip.com/ronnie-dr…

Very much enjoyed reading, and simultaneously listening to, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner

35 minutes well spent

Text at : poets.org/poem/rime…

And on Spotify at : open.spotify.com/show/5TBy…

Finished reading: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 📚

I often find myself thinking, if not saying out loud, “He’s doing his best, but then so was Liz Truss”

I take a disproportionate amount of pleasure from surrounding a word with stars to make it bold

Shortcuts to fold and unfold text in VS Code #VsCode