Coal tits stoking up on live mealworms.

Reform to tell Welsh museums how to present history, manifesto says Election pledges say Reform would ask museums to present history chronologically.

In more "archaeology isn't political" news... 🤬

BBC News - Reform UK will tell Welsh museums how to present history, manifesto says
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

#Archaeology 🏺

Now that I have finished the PhD, I am catching up with lots of stuff, including writing up my walking blog. I draft as I go along, but haven't had time to upload. Here is a lovely day back in 2023. mgctblog.com?p=1966

Very much looking forward to my talk next week at Buckden Towers, the episcopal palace where Katharine of Aragon dragged out a weary existence after being sent away from court. I will be talking about #1000TudorPeople Info here buckdentowers.com/event/an-eve... ,

Rain, New Year's Eve By: Maggie Smith The rain is a broken piano, playing the same note over and over. My five-year-old said that. Already she knows loving the world means loving the wobbles you can't shim, the creaks you can't oil silent-the jerry-rigged parts, MacGyvered with twine and chewing gum. Let me love the cold rain's plinking. Let me love the world the way I love my young son, not only when he cups my face in his sticky hands, but when, roughhousing, he accidentally splits my lip. Let me love the world like a mother. Let me be tender when it lets me down. Let me listen to the rain's one note and hear a beginner's song.

#poetry #nationalpoetrymonth
#poem #writingcommunity

“you are the poet, you walk inside my dreams”

~anaïs nin

🎨 olga petrikova "wildflowers"

Sunrise this morning here in Glastonbury.

The Qiantang river's tidal bore is the world's largest and most powerful of its kind. Sometimes two tides meet together forming a shape like a cross, that can become even more captivating at sunset.

Original post

Best babysitter ❤️

Agami Herons.

Back to the simple natural order of things…….. not human arrogance based on destruction of our water,air, environment for profit…… for the 1%

Archaeologists Find Homer’s Iliad Papyrus Inside a Mummy in Egypt - GreekReporter.com Archaeologists found a rare Iliad papyrus inside a Roman-era mummy in Egypt, highlighting the spread of Greek culture.

“Inside one of the mummies, the team discovered a rare papyrus containing a passage from Book II of the Iliad by Homer. The text includes part of the “Catalogue of Ships,” which lists Greek forces involved in the campaign against Troy.”

greekreporter.com/2026/04/19/h...

A long line of white shelf-like mushrooms growing along a fallen log lying among green grass in a forest

#MushroomMonday

The remarkable early-Norman crypt (1078) at St Mary's, Lastingham (North Yorks).
Burial place of St Cedd incorporating Saxon stone from the earlier church, and complete with nave, apse and side aisles.
Time peels away as you descend into this special ancient place!
📸2025

My friend's cat had one kitten. Just one little perfect kitten. This is so cute

oil on canvas composition, Impressionistic abstraction, layered brushwork, thin glazes, scumbled highlights, surreal dunes seamlessly rise into elegant slender towers, flowing geometry with elongated smooth vertical curves, clean surfaces, sharp elegant edges, calm and majestic negative space, bright crescent moon, wet-in-wet blending, luminous atmospheric haze, impasto accents, strong visual flow --ar 5:7 --stylize 400 --v 8.1

"Goodnight moon" #synthart

"Rainy Road" - my oil painting

#1000TudorPeople L is for Rowland Lee, who may have been the priest who m. Henry & Anne Boleyn in a secret ceremony at Whitehall in January 1533. Lee became president of the Council for Wales and was considered an administrator & ‘an extreme punisher of offenders’. amzn.to/3X5KVBp

Utterly Betrayed   The Rt Hon. Ralph St John Cholmondley having moped around glolmondley for three weeks in Belvoir with glandular felvoir, decided to surprise his fiancé in Frome.   Bursting into the rome, he found her cavorting with an awick from Hawick (via Worcester), whose close attentions had left her all of a florcester.   His fiancé, who hailed from Beaulieu, begged him not to get upset undeaulieu, as Ralph stared at them, boggle-eyed. Things aren’t how they look, she cried. Brian Bilston

Today’s poem is called ‘Utterly Betrayed’.

If you’re coming to see me at Stratford Literary Festival on May 8, be alert for high numbers of local swans 👀

🦢 www.stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk/events/natal...

Pictured: Leda fresco in Pompeii

A cat sitting in a box

Happy Caturday!

#Alphabetchallange
#WeekOForOld
#travel
#France
#Paris

A page from "Heart of Darkness, with all the text blacked out except for scattered words that read: that river was the farthest point of my experience Then I got a passion for maps and all the glories of blank spaces on the earth I would go there. The blank space.

Blackout Poem (original text Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness). #poem #poetry #art #writing #redacted

that river was the farthest point of my experience
Then I got a passion for maps
and all the glories of blank spaces on the earth
I would go there.
The blank space.

Bamburgh Castle in the background on the right, with some coastal rocks in the foreground on the left and the sea in between.

Æthelred I, king of the Northumbrians, was assassinated by a group of conspirators which included the ealdormen Ealdred and Wada #OTD in 796. Æthelred’s queen was Ælfflæd, a daughter of Offa, king of the Mercians. Bamburgh Castle 📸Clive Hicks

#otd 18April 1594 Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother made her will as she lay ill at her home near Exeter Cathedral .

Find out more from Devon’s Tudor Time Traveller .

rosemarygriggs.substack.com/p/the-last-w...

#womeninhistory #historicalfiction #exeter #elizabethan

Artist - Unknown

It was as an absolute pleasure to speak at the Winchester Books Festival today with @vnbateman.bsky.social We discussed our books, Economica and Women Who Ruled the World, putting women firmly back into the centre of world history #economica #womenwhoruledtheworld

A mighty pair of griffins from the sides of a sarcophagus! Bringing all the grandeur.

#HumanMade

Hourglass-shaped sunset clouds, Santa Fe, NM. 14”x11” oil

My painting STORMY WAVE