Laura Ashe

Do we need an explicit statement that "separate the art from the artist" only applies when the artist is (preferably long) dead and is not making money from the art?

This is a brilliant observation. As well as being true of the getting-ever-further-right, it's also a personality trait I've encountered in several colleagues of unknown political views. In. A. Sodding. University.

Today I went to the funeral of a former lover. There's a wonderful moment in Wolf Hall when Monica Dolan, playing Thomas More's wife, says that if you've known a man that way, you can't help wondering if he's cold.
Our bodies remember.

As a grad student I lived in the top floor flat in the middle here with the little dormer window; the building caught fire one morning and I was rescued by firefighters who helped me out of the window and down a ladder

Very fond memories, actually

We have two gorgeous, mad, always-indoor cats. One never tries to go outside. The other one does, but miaows like mad, as in "Look at me! I'm outside! I'm totally outside! If you don't grab me I'll, probably, go a bit further!" And it is adorable. Also they won't get run over and that is EVERYTHING

Photo from 2007; I'm standing in front of an arty Warhol-style (possibly Warhol) set of images of Jackie Kennedy. I look cynical (and young)

Found a very old picture of me looking on-brand-unconvinced

But the absolute best thing about this is, as demonstrated in a couple of recent by elections, it tops out at 20-25%

Open bedroom window with a window box and sunlight coming in; a brown cat is reclining on a table licking his leg, and an apricot coloured cat is halfway out on the windowsill in the sunshine

Spring gatti

What I find especially weird is that this was wholly fabricated but also wildly laughable

Sweet shot of a handsome man in a Mediterranean restaurant some years ago

Stephen Baxter, who died in January. A great historian and a lovely man

Bloody hell this guy has a beautiful unspoilt painting in his attic

Dedication

Oh gods with a white M&S vest underneath

I did not need to know that the Chancellor is slightly younger than me, but on the other hand I have certainly never worn an ill-fitting pastel coloured trouser suit, so it's not all bad

30 years ago Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club accurately predicted that men under late capitalism, empty consumers who had come to think of themselves as “the middle children of history” with no great wars to fight, would eventually prank and shitpost their way into fascism.

I've never read any Walter Scott, but resorted to Wikipedia to get a plot overview of one novel, and I can reveal I was not sufficiently prepared to read a synopsis ending "but on the way he falls into quicksand and dies".

I thought "I headed out" and then thought: woah that sounds wrong; is it "I hod out"? And no.
So it turns out there are some things you just can't do in the past

ARGYLE

You look NOBLE

"Brace yourself"
"I've been braced since the 80s love"

"I'm sorry but we've run out of flowers"

Yep, that's him! He's unstoppable

He's an omni-connoisseur

Some bot account complaining about pronouns in bio shit. I asked the bot to write a poem about pangolins and it did

It happened again

A smug-looking cat

Me thinking about Gorton and Denton

Note that the centre/left/progressive vote was 24997, with the hard right vote at 11284

Gorton and Denton for the insomnia win (also the massive hope, optimism, hell yes win)

God, my watch died during a run and that didn't even occur to me

Exactly! "Nothing to see here..."

Nah, they'd only take one of them