The Ancient Hills Between the Moor and the Sea

I've written about the Haldon Hills, a landscape you have probably have never heard of. I love it, and you might enjoy reading about it.
deepdownthings.substack.com/p/the-ancien...

I completely forgot that Tom Stoppard was also responsible for adapting Anna Karenina for Joe Wright’s film (2012). I don’t feel that Tolstoy mixes particularly well with TV and film, but that film really wasn’t bad at all. (I’ve read AK 3 times so am reasonably qualified to say this).

Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.

A bookcase opens to reveal a doorway in a large country house library

We love a secret doorway.

📷The secret door in the Library at Osterley, London by John Hammond

Nigel Slater’s The Christmas chronicles (grey hardback cover with gold embossed titles and four slender tree boughs) on a wooden table

It’s time

The stone bridge with numerous bends is shown in a soft autumn light

Other work by the Ladybird artists
‘Stopham Bridge in Autumn’
Artist: SR Badmin

Although with 4 kids and one modest income, he needed to!

When I was a child my dad would watch the budget coverage on the BBC with paper on a clipboard and a retractable pencil, working out how it would affect us. Nowadays the BBC website has a calculator on it. Dad was performing fiscal responsibility, I now realise.

They’ve been talking about the Budget for so long I’ve only just realised when it is, having been stuck in a permanent loop of “nearly budget, when is budget?”

Bertie is the very spirit of Christmas chaos

Just had an alert in Outlook asking me if I wanted to send an email during my work hours, on Tuesday 8am.

Sir, I don’t start work at 8am, so that wouldn’t be during my work hours.
Also, I haven’t finished work for today. I finish at 6 or 6.30. When did Microsoft start deciding my work hours?

a book page with a coat of arms showing a skull, next to it is written Caterine Morte

they had goth baddies in the 17th century as evidenced by the fact that a woman named Caterine Morte had a skull coat of arms

I have had this exact same issue today, where it threads individual replies to a bcc email I sent. Extremely annoying!

Earned settlement The government is consulting on how the current settlement system should be reformed and how those reforms should be implemented.

If, like me, this utter betrayal by Labour is making your blood boil, can I ask you let them know your feelings here www.gov.uk/government/c...

Swahili detected ya vas lyublyu English On the other hand, Lydia

For reasons, I found myself Google-translating the Russian expression “я вас люблю”, but because I couldn’t be bothered to turn on Russian script on my phone, I put in the transliteration, “ya vas lyublyu”.

It means “I love you”. Or at least I thought it did.

It is hat hair season and the time of year when I wonder why I bother to comb my fringe at all.

It’s giving

Hideous haunted hotel corridor carpet featuring blurred figures and faces

Genuine hotel corridor carpet I saw in France once. I think it contains the souls of former guests.

Road sign for 'Skirmish Paintball'

How delightfully quaint some of these old Devon village names are, their etymologies lost in the mists of time.

Today’s announcement by the Home Secretary marks an unprecedented and damaging departure from the UK’s long tradition of offering people sanctuary and the chance to rebuild their lives.

The side of an woman's effigy tomb showing the bottom of her dress and her feet (she lays on her back). The dress is depicted as many wiggled folds of fabric, and we can see the soles of her small shoes.

A close up of the side of a Viennetta - white ice cream with three 'folded' layers on top of flat layers. It looks a lot like the folds of drapery in the other photo.

ok, yep - I defy anyone to work out which is which

To suggest that having lived a life so grim that even an English tribunal will grant you asylum, and to have somehow managed to get here at great risk to life, is a "golden ticket" is absolutely fucking contemptible. Shame on this so-called Labour Party.

I am both intrigued and repulsed 😆

A date latte??

I hate portmanteau words but “slopaganda” is magnificent

A small pumpkin with a carved face depicting a mix of horror and exhaustion sitting in a large flower pot filled with weeds on a rainy day

Quite how this pumpkin manages to capture the November 2025 mood quite so accurately, I’m not sure.

The scene looks as if it has come straight out of the pages of ‘what to look for in autumn’ but is not. The scene focuses on the woodland floor and the creatures who live among the lovely rusty leaves

Other work of the Ladybird artists.
The Beech Wood
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

My issue with this is that the study involved a closed box of chips - gulls will be even bolder if the box is open. (Or in my recent case, the fried egg bap).

Shouting at gulls could stop food stealing - study Exeter researchers played different recordings to gulls in nine Cornish towns.

“In 2019, researchers at the university also found the secret to protecting your seaside chips from scavenging gulls was to stare at them.
The study revealed birds were more likely to steal food when they avoided the gaze of their victims.”

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I’ve suspected this for a while, but the arrival of my new (work) laptop has confirmed that the search function in the newer Desktop version of Outlook is terrible. This explains a lot.