Pink blossom and blue sky — the arrival of Spring always seems to lift the spirits.

De Chirico looking surprisingly like Hitchcock!

For the best part of a week in August, jousting (free to watch), feasting, fireworks and a general air of festivity take over the streets. Wonderful time to visit I think.

How enviable. I spent a week in Sete last summer enjoying the water-jousting festival. It was fascinating.

Arenal are counting on you!

@chrisdornan.bsky.social going through some filing cabinets I have had for a LONG time I found this! I made to Berlin for the first time last year and carelessly forgot to pack this essential guide book…

Happy New Year, Alix!

Gone for a smaller tree this year, but still the festive season has now begun! I hope you all have some relaxation and sociability to look forward to in the next couple of weeks.

Me too!

Is that the sequel to Love Actually?

Our kids between them played piano, violin, saxophone, trumpet, and bass guitar. We had very patient neighbours!

A post-retirement project perhaps??

This zeitgeist stuff is definitely now tipping into the uncanny. This image also features in Electric Dreams at Tate Modern, and is the image I brought back with me as a souvenir. Why is the visual culture of the 60s/70s speaking so powerfully to our contemporary moment I wonder.

I just saw this image for the third time today! It appears in the film I’m Still Here, which I found very powerful. You might enjoy it for its historical specificity and also for its invocation of the landscape of Rio.

This is rather eerie — you are the second person I am in contact with to compare the contemporary moment with King Crimson’s art work today!

How about Blake’s ‘Infant Joy’ and ‘Infant Sorrow’?

What a great find, it is such a striking image. Hope all is well, and wishing you a Happy Christmas!

Decorated Christmas tree.

Now the tree is up and decorated the festive season begins in earnest. Ho Ho Ho one and all!

It could have been written for this moment!

Worry not, Jo, this really happened. Kept local press going I think.

All genuine. Inverurie Loco Works is my local team, and there is some interesting economic and social history around its name!

Hackney putting on quite a show this morning!

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profess...

Interesting to think how many Philosophy degrees in the UK continued to foreground rhetoric in the late C20. Certainly the case when I was at Glasgow University.

The debate as a form is not really about the pursuit of truth. It is designed to train individuals in the art of rhetoric. I rather enjoyed it in my youth. In ‘competition debates’ you are often asked to argue a proposition with which you do not agree - with results Jo mentions. I no longer debate.

Save Westfield Nursery! Queen Mary University - Don't evict our toddlers! On Tuesday 28 May, staff and parents of Westfield Nursery (part of Queen Mary University) were informed by the university that the nursery would be closing in under three months time. The 18 nursery s...

chng.it/9Z7XKBmbGZ

Just spent an excellent week at Bard College, where Hannah Arendt’s grave can be found

A rich and lively conference at Bard College on Modernism, Time and Work. Fascinating to find this on the campus.