“Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”
At the end of the event, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation from the audience, during which she was moved to tears.”
Meta legal action forces Facebook whistleblower to sit in silence at Hay festival
“When I get to heaven, I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject.”
Winston Churchill the Painter, Wallace Collection, London, to Nov 29
A sad comment in the paper. Meera Syal on the death of her parents
“I felt doubly orphaned because I had lost my living link with India”
Caption on the big photo on the front page of today’s Times.
Television critic Kevin McCloud, the Grand Designs presenter, has said he finds reality TV “slightly exploitative”.
If the King, or the Prime Minister, or Tommy Tuchel had said reality TV was “extremely exploitative” and should be abolished immediately, then that would seem to me to be a front page thing.
Kevin McCloud saying it’s slightly so….I’m not sure
Probably why I’m a computer monkey and not a journalist
In the paper today
[Agatha] Christie once said she got the ideas for her novels while eating apples in the bath
Not something I’ve ever done
First time this year I’ve had to oil up to take the dog out.
This is party meteorological, and partly just me being lazy
#WearSunscreen
I use what I know as ‘the Windows Run Box’ quite a bit - the command prompt that pops up when you do Windows Key and R together.
It keeps a history, which is great until you make a mistake. I tried editing out such a mistake in the Registry. The history is in:
HKEY_USERS\user id, or possibly a user sid\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU
The easiest way to find the key is to search for whatever mistake it was that you made e.g. if you typed ggvim by mistake, then search for that.
I did this on 28th May….I’ll delete this post if I subsequently find that my laptop is mucked up beyond all recognition :)
I finished watching ‘Salisbury Poisonings: The Untold Story’
It was weird to watch. Bits of town I know really well. Bits I don’t. Lovely shots of the cathedral. My football chum Salah in Episode 3.
And then this awful tragedy, and unfathomably bad people.
A young friend, who’s not from these islands, just got a job in an Irish pub.
I’m worried that this will put her off Irish music forever
The swifts are back at Salisbury station 😀
(TBF they look like they could be bits of dirt on my phone lens in these pics, you’ll have to take my word for it)
Sad for my Saints-supporting chums, both for losing the chances of promotion and because I don’t know what will happen to the players and management. Up until now they had been doing pretty well.
BBC News - Spygate appeal: Southampton lose appeal against expulsion from play-offs - BBC Sport www.bbc.co.uk/sport/foo…
Call me shallow but I’m quite pleased that even though the Arsenal have won the Premiership for the first time in 20-odd years, it’s not even the top football story of the day 😀
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc #Southampton
Jeepers Southampton making the TV main news, not just the sports news
It’s only usually Chelsea that ever do that ! ⚽
My Crucial Track for 16 May 2026 - “A Girl Named Johnny Cash” by Jane Morgan
Share a song released 2+ years ago that you recently discovered.
I love this song.
I like funny songs, and this one is an answer record to one of my favourite funny songs, A Boy Named Sue
It’s very witty, there are musical references to other Johnny Cash songs throughout, and it’s got a happy ending.
You can’t ask for more than that :)
“A Girl Named Johnny Cash” by Jane Morgan on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
More thoughts on yesterday ⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
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we didn’t seem to get refereeing decisions going our way. Lots of minor ones favoured City
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Cucarella was daft to get booked for dissent, though
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watching the Cup Final on telly I get weirdly emotional during Abide With Me. I didn’t at all in the Stadium. I don’t know why not, but it’s probably just as well
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I’ll still have it at my funeral though. Not Angels, not Atmosphere ( either the Joy Division or the Russ Abbot), nor Monty ruddy Python
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we looked a zillion times better than we did when City beat us 0-3 at the Bridge
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they pressed really well
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it was the first time I’ve seen a royal since 1977
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McFarlane set us up really well. It worked in that we went to to toe with the best team in the country and only conceded a very good goal
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a big name manager is only important because fans and players think it is
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…..but that’s probably reason enough why you do have to get one
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I used to laugh at Pep’s justification for selling us Cole - they had to sell Cole to get Doku. Doku does now look that good
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their bench was quite a bit stronger than ours
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Sanchez is a good keeper. He kept us in the game against Leeds, and didn’t put a foot wrong against City
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Caicedo is one of my favourite ever Chelsea players, but he looked 50% of what he was earlier in the season
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a bloke next-but-one to us was telling the players to shoot all the time. A couple of times when it would have needed a 30-yard backheel
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I think we’ve recently paid the price for playing in the World Club Cup last summer. Partly physically and partly mentally.
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I wonder if part of the reason that some of the players didn’t get on with Rosenior was because they were a bit fed up, and tetchy, and generally in need of a decent break
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we didn’t see any pro Palestinian marchers
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we did see some of the Unite the Nation people at Waterloo. Odd coves, as Wodehouse might say. The Christian -type ones were very sinister
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I think it was probably called Unite the Kingdom. It couldn’t be more misnamed, whatever.
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we were sat near some flag-y people on the train on the way back. Couldn’t help hearing what they were saying….nothing racist, or unpleasant, but just deluded about all sorts of stuff.
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They were probably good people in many ways, but the way they came up with weird ideas about things fitted with the notion that Tommy or Nigel are people to trust
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I know it sounds patronising but I did feel sorry for them
A disappointing result, but we gave it a go against the best team in the country. Could have easily gone the other way. I was lucky to be there ⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
I’m not sure whether I’d prefer to be the next Prime Minister, or the next Chelsea manager.
Neither role seems to have a great deal of job security, tbh
Six in eight years vs ten in ten years, according to the internet. Possibly not counting interims.
⚽ #ChelseaFC #cfc
There was bit on the radio this morning about the Saints spying scandal, and then another bit about the new James Bond.
Surely the bloke behind the tree with the video camera is the ideal person to take on the role? ⚽😇🕵️♂️
I’ve been to see Jude Rogers talk about music, and both memory and memories at Salisbury Cathedral. Really interesting….will read the book
My Crucial Track for 14 May 2026 - “Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles
Share a song you call something other than its official title. What do you call it?
For a long time I called this song ‘Eleanor Rigsby’….I did think that was what it was actually called.
I did most of my growing up in the 1970s, and their was a sitcom called Rising Damp which featured a character called ‘Rigsby’, He could have been Eleanor Rigby’s comical, but malevolent cousin. He was the landlord of a shabby house and the only people he ever interacted with his equally lonely tenants.
I had a nose around the internet and I can’t see that Rigsby was named in reference to the Beatles song, but it does resonate.
“Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.
My Crucial Track for 13 May 2026 - “Cumann na Mná” by Christy Moore
Share a song you discovered via another artist’s song (cover, sample, featured artist, etc)
Going slightly off-prompt - this is a song that made me re-evaluate another song.
The song I listened to again is Celtic Symphony by the Wolfe Tones. Celtic Symphony has a chorus / chant of ‘Ooh, aah, up the RA’. RA is ‘Republican Army’.
I’ve got a complicated, or probably more accurately, confused view of ‘the struggle’. There are lots of reasons for that which I won’t go into here,
Anyway, this is Christy Moore singing Mick Blake’s song about Celtic Symphony. It’s a great song in its own right, I think
“Cumann na Mná” by Christy Moore on Apple Music
This is from Crucial Tracks. My profile is here.