#savethecobblestone

Just got tickets for Dublin. The pre-sale queue numbers were terrifying. Mara joining us, too.

Great news to start the week. Snippet sounds fun.

#thestrokes

We Have Friends Everywhere.

Got full body chills when Gosh dropped at the end of the latest Shoresy episode.

Can't go wrong with that kind of process.

Beautiful!

And Maggie O'Farrell.

New books incoming from Sara Baume, Lucy Caldwell, and (just announcement) Emily St. John Mandel. Something to look forward to in the cesspit that is 2026.

If I - some asshole - quickly understood that this was what was happening, then I am reasonably sure that the Foreign Office and the security services also spotted it early on.

I held my stock in Lily Allen. I held it tight. Feeling wholly vindicated right now.

Daytime drunk at a food festival in your home town and CHIC's I Want Your Love drops in the beer tent. There are certain highs it's simply a privilege to meet.

'Til I Die - Remastered 2009 The Beach Boys · Surf's Up · Song · 1971

Well, that's tremendously sad. RIP, Brian Wilson. A beautiful musician, a genius. open.spotify.com/track/2Uup75...

#np Sly & the Family Stone - Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

A decade of pure joy.

I'm really sorry to hear this, Salma. You did an impressively brave thing. I hope you come to be as proud of yourself for doing it as we (your dedicated fan club!) are of you.

KNEECAP STATEMENT 14,000 babies are about to die of starvation in Gaza, with food sent by the world sitting on the other side of a wall, and once again the British establishment is focused on us. We deny this ‘offence’ and will vehemently defend ourselves. This is political policing. This is a carnival of distraction. We are not the story. Genocide is. As they profit from genocide, they use an ‘anti-terror law’ against us for displaying a flag thrown on stage. A charge not serious enough to even warrant their ‘crown court’, instead a court that doesn’t have a jury. What’s the objective?

To restrict our ability to travel. To prevent us speaking to young people across the world. To silence voices of compassion. To prosecute artists who dare speak out. Instead of defending innocent people, or the principles of international law they claim to uphold, the powerful in Britain have abetted slaughter and famine in Gaza, just as they did in Ireland for centuries. Then, like now, they claim justification. The IDF units they arm and fly spy plane missions for are the real terrorists, the whole world can see it.

WE STAND PROUDLY WITH THE PEOPLE. YOU STAND COMPLICIT WITH THE WAR CRIMINALS. WE ARE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY. YOU ARE NOT. WE WILL FIGHT YOU IN YOUR COURT. WE WILL WIN. FREE PALESTINE

“The thing that we all insisted wasn’t happening and scolded people, and agitated for their blacklisting, arrest and exclusion from the public square for saying was happening, that thing we all said was cynical terrorist agitprop by gullible fools? That thing? Well, we would like it to stop now.”

(This is from 5/6 years ago, so maybe things have changed since, but the errors would suggest otherwise.)
End of rant.

It make look like you've got the winning/leading bid, but by the time the operator reacts to the floor preference and updates the bid, the bidding is over.

Also, from memory, Invaluable doesn’t have a “Room” button for room preference where a floor and online bid may clash (or where another online platform gets to the bid first), leading to more confusion and removing time for the Invaluable user to react and bid.

Conversely, on Invaluable’s system, the €110 lights up as a gold button which then has to be clicked by the operator before being announced. This extra step leads to mistakes and time delays.

The-Saleroom’s system automatically populates bids by its users. Let’s say it’s €100 hammer in the room, if a Saleroom bidder bids €110 on their own screen it will automatically update as the "current bid" on the auctioneer's operator's screen, so the operator need simply shout out the bid: “€110!”

That's absolute spot on, but on this occasion it was well in excess of the hammer price. Just a mistake by someone operating the system, I think. Winning sleepers is hard enough!
Interestingly enough, having worked at an auction house...

So frustrating.
I've just received an outbid notice from Invaluable even though the absentee bid I left was higher than the hammer price!