Alison Gow

One minute you’re scrolling cake recipes, the next you’re elbow deep in Bean Soup Theory. Oh the humanity

An illustration of a fox, hare and red deer, along with a great tit, blue tit and robin. Text says: Mamaliaid Prydain. Adar yr Ardd. Factual ebooks for intermediate Welsh learners featuring: Short description of each animal, annotated illustrations, key vocabulary. Praise for Adar yr Ardd: “the cutest way to improve your Welsh,” Maarten. “A beautiful, colorful book with so much information!” Melanie.

One thing I've struggled with as a Welsh learner is finding ebook-audiobook pairs so that I can listen whilst reading. That's why I want to record an audiobook to go with my non-fiction ebook about mammals. Pre-reg here – www.kickstarter.com/... – to be notifie...

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Photo is a still from a Marcus the Worm video, showing an upright worm with eyes and arms.

"Robert help"...
Most of TikTok seems trapped on deathly EverstTok, but I've somehow got stuck on MarcusTheWormTok and while I'm not mad about it I don't know the lore. Anyway, this is all I see right now:

Watched the video of someone making the school dinner classic, Cornflakes Tart, and the first comment underneath about English eating habits made me laugh. The immediate reply under that one has absolutely broken me though.

As a Pembrokeshire native, I approve of this message 😂

Miss piggy dressed in goth style with emo eye makeup

Went looking for an Elmo Muppet gif, mistyped without the L and got this absolute gem

I asked ChatGPT to give me a short, accurate social media bio; it suggested "mildly feral, mostly wholesome'.
Honestly, I'm not hating it.

That's pretty dreadful (and puts me off giving them my listening time). Podcast Bro territory adjacent.

How do we feel about people wearing headphones singing aloud on trains? Do we appreciate their free spirit and joy or feel murderous? I'm murderous but also worried this is not Zeitgeist-y of me.

A screenshot of a Facebook memory of a tweet that said “letter arrived addressed to Alison Gow of the Liverpool Echo newspaper, angel Mesenger, giver - amen”. Scared to open it.

At least someone once recognised my talents 😇

It's got a *great* ring road - I used to enjoy bypassing Nantwich very much on my Reach travels.

Not a bad thought though! Many small boys could have fulfilled their burning career ambition.

That sounds really interesting/unsettling. I think I’m going to have to check the Cheshire one out.

If you want to hear a thick-as-mince senior US security advisor pitch a tantrum in the face of hard questions, the World At One has got you covered (starts @ 13.11) www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Fair play to Sarah Montigue for pressing on despite his nonsense.

Ah that’s so cool - was it very techie? Btw Churchill’s war rooms in Liverpool are also worth a visit if you’re ever in the vicinity.

I fear they’ve been influenced by MI6’s secret HQ sign shenanigans.

I kinda want to visit it

Thank you, honestly it’s never a surprise with Avanti! And I did indeed end up sprinting for any random train 😂

My train is stuck at Euston because the driver hasn’t shown up - gone completely awol. I’m pretty sure this will end with all passengers being ejected and sprinting for any random train going vaguely north west 😑

As a trustee of the Journalists' Charity, I got to do a 2-day governance training course with the Civil Society this week. I've been on boards for 10+ years, but still found so many useful takeaways from this. Really recommended.

In related news, we probably need to buy a generator, which we've resisted for years but it's looking unavoidable now 😑

So all in, not insignificant numbers of homes are affected (I'd love to know the total number) but BT's reaction seems to be pretty much "yeah, sorry 'bout that".

It's not just a countryside issue - the analogue switch-off also impacts many elderly and vulnerable people whose assisted living devices rely on the service.

*Ir bears repeating: There is no mobile signal, for miles around. A neighbour broke her leg on the mountain and couldn't phone for help. She had hypothermia by the time she was found.

In severe storms, we can also be entirely cut off by fallen trees and flood water. We're pretty typical of rural mountain areas. (Where lots of tourists also get into scrapes and arrive on the doorstep asking for a landline phone*).

So an analogue phone handset is a winter essential, along with candles and a gas cannister hot plate.
The analogue switch off is Very Bad News.

[Not posted in a while so here's a rant about the analogue switch-off. Sorry.]

Where I live, if the electricity goes off in bad weather (power cuts can last for a few days at a time due to storms) we also lose WiFi - which the mobile service is going to run off.

Sunday morning sky is looking a bit ominous.

Our village has a monthly film night and January was Brian and Charles, partly because it was shot locally. Not a genre I’d normally seek but it was lovely; weird but heartwarming. And North Wales looks stunning.