Since June, I have had occasion to visit a part of Rome I barely know, way on the other side of town, literally. Coming back on the bus one time I happened to glance up at the buildings and was absolutely amazed. Decorative friezes, fancy brickwork, ornate balustrades and balconies, these were somet...

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Naomi Duguid is just one of the writers I enjoy who has succumbed to the lure of Substack. I’ve made my brief pitch to each of them to consider some other place, which generally falls on almost-deaf ears because of the supposed network effects: “the building of visibility and profile via cross-mentions, cross-posted comments, etc”.

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“I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.”

The famed Field Notes tagline is all very well but what if, even having written it down, you fail to remember it? Quasi-disaster ensues, if you’re me. As usual, the culprit is past me not paying enough attention to future me’s needs.

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The Squeeze’s yoga class had transferred for the summer to a spot on the far side of our local park. Last night was the first chance she had to go and I elected to go with so that I could help on the way home. There was a beautiful fullish moon so it wasn’t hard to see and it was a very pleasant walk. When we got to the gate out of the park, however, disaster.

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Ravelry is an astonishing resource for knitters, crocheters and various other fibre crafts. It hosts patterns, advice forums, yarn details and kinda sorta blogs, all co-created (as the cool kids would have it) by the hundreds of thousands of members. I joined earlier this year, when I took up crochet, in search of something more interesting than Granny Squares.

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