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RIP Alfred Brendel. I heard him practising once before a concert, a Busoni transcription of a Bach Chorale Prelude. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

It is the Feast of Elisabeth of Schönau, a 12th C mystic, and so extreme a visionary Hildegard of Bingen had to talk her down. She was accused of being an inventrix novitatum, inventor of novelties, to shut her up but she became hugely influential. Here’s her skull.

Only just won my first horse race #RoyalAscot

Surging with triumph, I just offered a tip to a chap called Sam at #RoyalAscot using my famous nouse, and he was very polite but thought he’d pick a different horse. Then someone told me he won the Grand National in 2022.

It is the 1,700th anniversary of the adoption of the Nicene Creed, perhaps the oldest Imperially sanctioned corporate statement formulated by a committee still in everyday use.

People of beloved Chorley and thereabouts, great event on Saturday in aid of a great cause!

The 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws. The rubber shark Spielberg built for it kept breaking down so they had to use a menacing theme by John Williams to suggest its presence instead. It worked, and Jaws became the highest grossing film until Star Wars.

l keep thinking of PD James’ dystopian novel The Children of Men, in which the insupportable elderly are invited by the state to participate in a TV-advertised ‘Quietus’, a sort of Saga cruise, and sail off in boats towards a sunlit horizon and once over it are drowned.

Another issue with #AssistedDying: even if life is unendurable, death cannot be part of a care plan. It is something quite different and therefore should not be mandated by the state nor administered by medics as if it were.

The hypericums of Ruislip make a fine show.

Happy birthday Jimmy Somerville. Will we still need you, will we still feed you, when you’re sixty-four? You bet!

Tyres fixed thanks!

Just had to stop watching a documentary because the voiceover pronounced strength ‘strenth’.

It is the Feast of Audrey, or St Etheldreda of Ely. There was a fair held there on this day that sold bits of souvenir tat so shoddy it gave us the word ‘tawdry’. We named our Audrey after her, for she arrived at the Vicarage on this day.

Just posted a thank you letter in a pillar box and now feel like Valerie Singleton making a pipe rack.

I have questions about the B2: (a) how does it fly without a tail? (b) with a crew of two do they take it in turns to fly and rest on a 36hr mission (also lavatory provision)? (c) can anyone other than the US afford them?

I just had a very disappointing bit of tuna.

Clearing a room and I found a school photo from 1973. It was taken in July so please note I was wearing a pullover under my blazer. Give me the child of (eleven) and I’ll show you the man.