New #RabbitholeDetectives - exploding whale! Exploding financial instruments! Disappearing colonies! open.spotify.com/episode/2ZE5XS…

Having a smashing time with nurses The RCN

Not a quarter-mile from departing the stop this bus has gone through two red lights. Buccaneering would be a charitable way of describing it.

Am interested in why Rory Stewart likes to call guests by title — Speaker Emerita, Prime Minister &c &c — and ALASTAIR CAMPBELL does not (if this were a fight it’s not one I have a dog in).

Happy Ascension Day! youtu.be/NfOYItcGcwA?si…

Pro Chancellor Morcea Walker being vested at UniofNorthampton yesterday. She arrived from Jamaica in the 50s, became a brilliant teacher, is Vice Lord Lieutenant, and does the BEST impression of a redoubtable matron discovering her cooking rum has not survived an Atlantic crossing.

It is the Feast of Julian of Norwich, patron saint of cat ladies.

It’s Hedgehog Awareness Week - time to celebrate one of the more welcome breeds in the gardens here at Althorp The late, wonderful, Carol Challis asked me to take 20-odd hedgehogs in, as they needed a new home, a few years back - and that’s how I got involved in this annual…

I am lunching on strozzapreti. It means ‘priest choker’ #challengeaccepted

Bought a standing desk to spare my bad back and assembling it did my back in.

More GLORY for Kettering!! #KyrenWilson is snooker world champion. First Cytringan to lift the trophy in 90 years!

Watching #BlackBerry . I don’t think I have ever loved a gadget more. Why don’t they rule the world?

Is there a universe in which you could make a Lancashire hotpot with venison? *asking for a friend who can’t be bothered to go to the butchers*

Don’t you sometimes think Brünnhilde’s motif in the Ring sounds a bit “hello boys”?

STOP PRESS

After a thorough investigation it transpires that the driver who called me a #tosser in Hay-on-Wye on Saturday (which I didn’t really mind, by the way, because I am a liability in traffic) was not one of the excellent local taxis but a private hire, origin unknown.

Cast ne’er a pacamac ere May be out.

Got a great stick.

Sunday lunch courtesy of my pal Werner, formerly Station Master of Edinburgh Waverley #GoldenAgeOfRail

Went for a coffee after church in Hereford. My friend went to pay and the bloke said, “I hear we have a celebrity in today”. My friend said, “you probably mean Richard?” He looked at me and said, “I wouldn’t know him from a bar of soap”.

In Hay on Wye today, through no fault of my own*, I was called a “tosser” and a “wanker” in two unrelated incidents.

*disputed