Richard Coles
@RevRichardColes
Former Communard, Chancellor of the University of Northampton, writer, broadcaster, podcaster, author of the Canon Clement Mysteries. Please don’t shout at me.
At Port Isaac met Wayne from Hackney who used to fall asleep as a boy listening to to the Shipping Forecast and would dream of Lundy, Rockall, Humber, Faroes, Viking, S Utsere &c &c and now he sails them all in his yacht. Go Wayne!
A small bottle of restorative whisky I kept in my bag has leaked and I am stepping out in the streets of Cardiff bay smelling like a distillery.
On a train, looking out of the window. I think of TS Eliot watching a white horse galloping in a meadow, of Larkin looking at postal districts packed like squares of wheat. I saw a dog having a dump in a park.
I rise at 0430 to catch some lobsters* with Callum. *0846 a lobster
Nul points to the first person saying “what’s occurrin’?”
It is the feast of Mary Magdalene wrongly identified as a prostitute in the 5th C but it stuck. Far more interestingly she’s the apostle to the apostles the first to encounter Jesus confusingly not dead on Easter morning, tidings she brought to the rest of us.
What have I been doing today? Shepherding saltmarsh sheep on the Gower peninsula if you MUST know. “Come BY, come BY!”
My #water bill will rise by 47% in 2025, less than half as much as the 100% bonus-ban-busting pay rise for my water company’s boss. This represents “common industry practice”, like rinsing customers to pay shareholders dividends and filling our rivers and sea with shit.
The Leith police dismisseth us; but never the Neath police.
A nana on the train is playing with her little granddaughter, obviously delighting in each other. Then I realise the nana is young enough to be my daughter.
Mad thought of the day: Harvard should relocate to Canada. It’s only 300 miles to Montreal! Up yours, MAGA!
I am enjoying the fabled vantage point of the Costa on the footbridge at York station.
It’s #steeplesaturday you say? St Mary’s Stamford is one of my favourites.
I’m getting a train from Stevenage to Harrogate. Who even knew you could do that?
It is Palace Day, when we are invited to consider Royal palaces around the world. Here’s one: Mon Repos, at Corfu, summer palace for the King of the Hellenes from 1864 to 1974. Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh was born on the dining room table there in 1921.
It is the centenary of the publication of Mein Kampf. By 1933 Hitler was £5m richer, in today’s values. He disavowed it that year when he became Chancellor but by 1939 it had sold 5m copies in a dozen languages. The authorities waived the tax due on his royalties.
The bookmark is happening: and it’s a multipack BONANZA.
A memory that a slightly older Maidwell Hall schoolboy shared with me when I was researching my boarding school memoir A Very Private School - it concerns a bully of a Maidwell master - “Chalkie” White, and karma: “One extraordinary event I remember was when Chalkie White…