Maggie Gee

@vivienlash Looks like an Istanbul ferry to me, but ferries all look the same by day

Mr Lash on the Shanghai ferry. Sharks out of shot in the water. Or is it Hong Kong? Next stop Pudong or Kowloon?

@vivienlash Have fun. BTW, no contact re the post ( sounds like a spy message)

@vivienlash I love #williamblake and wangled two terms of working just on him in my undergrad degree (my tutor was luckily an irresponsible poet). I got my marriage blessed in St James’s Piccadilly because that was where Blake was christened. It’s still a good radical church.

My Soho neighbour William Blake. Laughed at when he was alive, worshipped now he’s been dead for a while. #dead #artists #soho #neighbours #blake #god

@JudithHaire We love it too! Gentle, eccentric, human, takes its time in a good way x

It's wonderful

I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument. New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history. Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to live up to it. I will always fight for a New York City that invests in our LGBTQ+ community, defends their dignity, and protects every one of our neighbors—without exception.

I say this as a proud gay man, a husband, a father, and a grandfather: America is greatest not because we are the same, but because we are different and still choose one another. Donald Trump ordered the removal of the Pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument. That act is not neutral. It is erasure. Stonewall is the birthplace of a movement born from criminalization, police abuse, and state-sanctioned shame. Taking down that flag sends a clear message: some histories are optional, some people expendable. This decision fits Trump’s broader effort to dismantle equality by treating recognition as dangerous and difference as a threat. That mindset always puts due process next on the chopping block. You do not defend the Constitution by narrowing who it protects. I’ve seen this same impulse play out locally. In Oceanside, City Councilmember Jimmy Figueroa voted to remove the Pride flag, claiming it was in the “community’s best interest.” Too often, that phrase means protecting comfort over respecting existence. Erasing people is never in the community’s best interest. I’ve also seen what courage looks like. In La Mesa, we fought to raise the Pride flag, and it still flies today. Nothing was lost. Something honest was gained. Respecting others, protecting equality, and refusing to erase people is not political theater. It is the minimum standard of a free society. History does not disappear because Donald Trump or local politicians take down a flag. It only exposes those who are afraid of the truth.

@ElizaPacey @LauraEWebsterr I would agree, except that everyone born must have some rights, surely?

@LauraEWebsterr He has NO rights

BREAKING: Peter Mandelson just sent this secret notice to all UK media, demanding they leave him alone. He uses IPSO clauses designed to support grieving families in a bid to stop scrutiny of his relationship with Epstein We have published it in full. #Echobox=1770404545-2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">thenational.scot/news/25834517.…

If Janet Todd says it’s ’read beautifully’, we’d all better listen!

I just need to take a break from normal life, but how much can you cut out? Days ought to be growing longer, but not in my experience. The ‘retreat-at-home’, that’s what I need. Maybe getting up at 5 will do it…

Good luck Cauvery. I need to say the same thing to myself, so may I borrow/share your pledge? X

Let’s jump! Natalia Osipova as Giselle. #ballet #tututuesday

Hello @RebeccaCalderon & other dear distant friends. We got an hour of sunlight at breakfast & life was beautiful because it was peacetime & we had food & I felt what Elizabeth Strout called ‘something gold-coloured flicker inside me: it was joy’. Then a tiny touch of fear

Bigger than us ❤️❤️❤️ On a lightless day like this, I remember & miss what we usually love

Reading it. It’s fascinating, difficult, vivid, a sea of moments & breaths of completely believable life the poem makes you live through, feeling and sometimes falling your way towards meaning. Bright shattered images & quiet, confident rhythms. Cultivated, brilliant, major👏🏼

@AmandaPCraig @christiwhittem I know what you mean, Amanda. But alas, it can, if enough of our writing is sucked into the maw of AI and spat out again. And that’s already happened, so we’re in a process of clawing back, clawing back.

@christiwhittem I believe that AI will take far more from lawyers and doctors than from writers. True creativity can’t be mimicked.

Very worrying indeed. As someone says in the article, an English degree teaches so much, including communication skills, critical & creative thinking, but now that uni costs so much, it feels risky...SO sad.

Listen to @BBCRadio4 Start the Week @NickMakoha & al to hear why writing matters, & from Nick, what writing is like, & how writers hide & reveal themselves. I’ve just ordered his book, The New Carthaginians. Uganda taught me lots I put into a diptych, My Cleaner and My Driver.

@DontLetYourTea Absolutely! Yes now I can see us, we were sitting outside, weren’t we? V bright morning if you hadn’t slept much! Happy Christmas & more happy wandering to you both! 😊

@maggiegeewriter We were looking for breakfast, you were sat on the next table (speaking English) and being rather excited about our Camino, we fell into conversation. Serendipitously!

Beginning the three pint sherry trifle, what are you preparing today? #ChristmasCountdown

@DontLetYourTea The Christmas cards 😟 Shannon, we’d better just come round to yours ☺️

The Lake, Platt Fields Park Manchester in the winter.