Sadly Lowlands and my place diverge when we meet the students’ union: the fictional one resists whereas my own is utterly indifferent and spineless and the students have been carefully turned into silent consumers The result is the same though: the last episode is called The Death of a University.

And here’s the VC, an American named Jack Daniels.

Last night I watched the penultimate episode of mid-1980s campus comedy-drama A Very Peculiar Practice and had a revelation. My university isn’t paying expensive consultants to wreck the place: they’re just watching the show and enacting the script. Consider: here’s the VC and a Prof of English

Alison Bechdel’s character Ginger knows what I mean.

Wonderful to be back in the world of Alison Bechdel, Holly, the DTWOF characters, many cats and goats, as the humans at least grapple with age, fame, art in the marketplace, new social structures and identities, being too online and more. I hope there’s a lot more to come.

Another @therealyplac.bsky.social classic from those repeat customers at Heavenly Desserts: the full cycle lane/double yellows. The icing on their cake is that he is less than one car length from an actual parking spot.

I seem to have had very little time for reading other than this PhD thesis recently, and it doesn’t help that I have four books on the go. I have just finished Amanda Cross’s Death in a Tenured Position. Who killed Harvard’s first tenured woman professor of English? Only Kate Fansler, detective and

Very against nationalisation, the (checks notes) supposedly Communist government of the People’s Republic of China.

Another rejection for the scrapbook.

@daisyeblack.bsky.social You’ve never been like this Daisy. Unlike some!

You seen the photo…now read the book:

Wenlock Olympian Games fencing now finished. Congratulations to all the competitors who came from the UK, the US, Slovakia, China, Brittany and elsewhere. Don’t know about them but I’m exhausted and everything hurts. Sorry I didn’t get shots of the children’s team event. Too busy refereeing.

Back in 1986, it was a full men’s and women’s foil event, with a plate competition for people knocked out early - all for £2.50. Most events now are £50 without the plate.

All set up for the 43rd Much Wenlock Olympian Games fencing competition tomorrow. This year with live screens, repeater lights and all the tech you’ve seen in the later, larger Olympics.

Here we go with my 3rd PhD examination of the summer and potentially my very last one, depending on redundancy decisions. This one’s the Tourmalet of them all: 467 pages combining a novel and a critical commentary.

Very cool author photo, @adamroberts.bsky.social! Quite Scott Walker.

Funny, the last time a landed multimillionaire claimed to be ‘the people’ against ‘the Establishment’ it was Oswald Mosley. And he didn’t represent the poorest postcode in the country, unlike Farrago of Lies.

Very against immigration is Our Nigel. The only thing he likes flowing across borders is foreign money, no questions asked. Preferably in Small Notes.

Hmm. I can think of one Labour minister who ‘made’ money the same way as Big Nige, i.e accepting it from richer men. Unfortunately his name is Peter Mandelson.

Hmm… Plaid Cymru, the Green Party and Labour all beat UKIP fair and square in by-elections recently. Or does he think ‘being hopeful instead of racist’ is somehow cheating?

Ah yes, those notorious Reds at the *checks notes* Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph.

The new art lecturer has a different view:

Even the cut-throat Yanks who take over Lowlands University in A Very Peculiar Practice decide not to sack the arts staff.

I see the Big Bad Wolf is now profiting from the housing shortage he caused.

As it’s America’s weekend, here’s the story of the Wolverhampton men who re-enact the Vietnam War…with their wives playing the Vietcong.

A fine July 4th concert at @thecbso.bsky.social - great Copland and Towers, interesting Proce and an absolute banger - John Adams’s Harmonium.

Bangor’s Adran Cymraeg/Welsh Department staff have the best offices, including a terrace with this view.

I do hope Austria v Spain is known as the Habsburg Derby. Whoever loses, I’m sure they’ll take it on the chin.

Another war-related novel after the Powell; AS Byatt’s Ragnarok (2011), combing a retelling of the Norse gods with the story of her childhood experience in WW2 and how it made her an odd, questioning writer. A beautiful book too, especially the Van Dijck typeface.

The ginger hares of Cromane, Kerry - occasionally some scumbags from Limerick try to round them up and take them for coursing. (more photos at the end of this album: www.flickr.com/photos/plash...)