Exchanging baby photos with Dad. I’m guessing this was taken in a studio in Denison TX circa 1941. Dad’s in the sailor suit here, with his little brother and his ma. I never knew my grandma, whose own mother was of the Choctaw Nation.

…everything this novel is praised for would cause the industry’s hackles to rise now. There’s a quote from the Washington Post on the back that tells us it’s for “those who feel Barbara Pym-ish on some days and Stephen King-ish on others”. But such tonal shifts are absolutely verboten now. 2/

Making my way more haltingly through John Bowen’d “rediscovered” novel The Girls than I think I would if I wasn’t trying to read it during feeding and changing duties. It’s so precisely my sort of thing — not just what I want to read, but what I’d like to write. But… 1/

Once again, I am waiting for my appointment with Dr WC Fields.

Started listening to @drjamesbailey.bsky.social’s Muriel Spark autobiography Like a Cat Loves a Bird while on feeding and changing duty for the twins. I love how someone as precise with words as Spark was reduced to a microblogging style exclamatives in the face of Victoria Falls.

Christopher Lee always insisted he wore a bald wig in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. If so, it’s the most realistic piece of pate furniture he ever sported…

Epigraph to Silas Marner, which I’m reading while waiting with my wife in the maternity ward of George Eliot Hospital.

Don’t want a big car, but this is tricky. There’s room in the boot for carry cots or the buggy frame (into which both carry cots and car seats fit, but you’re not supposed to wheel babies around in car seats). Every day’s going to be that problem of three passengers and a boat that only holds two.

So grateful to the people who planted these limes and maples.

It’s noticeably quieter down by the pond, but this is a nice haul. The linnet is the only one I’d query.

Same energy.

I reckon this is pretty atmospheric too.

Honestly, the ravens kronking to each other from pylon to pylon are gothic as fuck.

The grebelings are very big now but still peeping to be fed by their adults.

Don’t think this photo of a Great Crested Grebe and its almost-grown brood will pass muster on Springwatch. Interesting how this Midlands pair are so far ahead of their pair in Northern Ireland.

My fixed focus camera for use taking photos of initially fixed focussed, tiny people. Probably ought to have gone for a half frame option. Anyway, this’ll do the job. If I like the results, might invest in a reconditioned higher spec film camera later on.

I bought a copy of this Cahiers du Cinéma but it hasn’t made it out of whatever box we put it in when we moved. This came up on FB memories today. I guess it’s an actual tweet. Remember them?

We had a baby shower yesterday. We didn’t do a gender reveal (because why?), but apparently we’re under pressure to do a “ginger reveal” (a lot riding on my maternal grandfather’s genes making it into the mix).

None of the newer streets around us have this. These beautiful lime trees are making all the difference today.

Five years ago my father-in-law released the Peregrine he’d nursed back to health after finding it dazed under a pylon.

Common Chiffchaff, or as I like to call them, Riffraff Chiffchaff.

We’ve just been batfowling.

Professor Sir Stanley Wells (that formula never looks right, does it?)* is 96 today. I remember noting he was the same age as Clint Eastwood when I was at the Shakespeare Institute in the 90s. So many similarities… *Except for Prof Sir Christopher Frayling. That’s how he was christened, isn’t it?

Mr Woodley. #thefilmcrowd

Hosting an author Q&A tonight at my writing workshop with Jess Shannon. Jess was my fellow student on the MA at Warwick and was very obviously a star in the making.

Lincoln is the hardest possible place to escape from by car between 5 and 7pm. So I went for a curry instead. This Nepalese restaurant is fantastic. At waiter’s suggestion, I went for the Lasun Kukura Khursani. “Don’t worry — if you don’t like it, I’ll eat it.” Reader, I liked it.

Another extraordinary day, this time at HMP Lincoln.

My mother-in-law dropped these by yesterday. I think we’ve already chosen though. It’s a ridiculous responsibility. And to think, I spend almost no time on choosing names for my characters. They just pop into my head.

Not-so-Mute Swan. What a weird noise.

Thought getting to the Mark Gatiss event at Stratford Literary Festival 15 minutes early would be fine.