By way of context, olive production across Greece will be half what it was last year. Spain and Italy are far worse. As a result, olive oil which I could sell at the village press for little over 2 Euros a litre in 2021 could now be sold for almost 10 Euro a litre. The problem is, of course, that while some farms are not down by much, others  including mine, have suffered a catastrophe. I reckon we will be lucky if we get a fifth of our 2021 harvest. However…

I flagged up the account below, @B6385405196,  to twitter/X which says that it bans all accounts/tweets which show a hate towards a particular race, religion or ethnic grouping. I would have thought an image of Hitler with the words “Jews must be removed” fits that bill but it seems not. Twitter/X has got back to me saying “this account hasn’t broken any rules”. Hell’s teeth Elon, are you employing actial Nazis these days? 

Another day comes and another chap has cancelled his subscription to Shareprophets, the finamcial, fraud busting website I run. He does so with a blood libel against the Jewish state of Israel. My reply telling him his soul will burn in hell was headed “good riddance”. I’d feel dirty taking money from such vermin. Lambie writes:

As with all three year olds everything has to be pink for my youngest daughter Jaya. Expect many presents to be that colour this Christmas. But only, of course, if she is a good girl. Ottherwise she knows that Father Christmas will be bringing her a lump of coal and the term dates for a boarding school. That is what happens to naughty girls.

As ever, the Mrs. puts on Radio 4 over breakfast to push my blood pressure up. I suspect it is all part of a cunning plan to make her a wealthy young widow. “Just a little bit more woman’s hour, that should bring on the coronary,” I can almost hear her saying it to herself.

Poor Nihal on a must be near six figure salary, Arthanayake says that his mental health is suffering from being in an “overwhelmingly white” environment at the BBC.  In the UK 81.7% of the population is white according to the last census.  Round at the BBC, where Nihal is a presenter on Radio 5, the latest stats show that 16.4% of the workforce is not white but the corporation is targeting a 20% figure.

Maybe what grabs you are the windows either side of the tree. If you look closely you will see that the ones on the right are bricked up and painted. These are an unusual sort of “wndow tax window”. Because this part of the house was the side folks saw as they took their milk down to the river to be shipped to Chester, this was the part “dolled up.” I could not unbrick the windows if I wanted as they are one of the reasosn that the hovel is listed. But I rather like them. In between the windows is a Christmas treat I picked up today. It is the annual “victim.”

So an “Irishman”, apparently, one of those Paddy’s born in North Africa, pulls out a knife and stabs a woman and three kids in Dublin.

As a stalwart member of his chapel, my son Joshua is very much a traditionalist when it comes to Advent calendars. Last year there were howls of protest when the Mrs got one from the chapel which turned out to be loaded with chocolate. And thus I have returned to the company recommended by my old pal Malcolm Stacey, HERE

A couple of weeks ago we had that rare occurrence, the Mrs. joining me at the school gates to pick up Joshua and Jaya. Honestly, there are folks in this village who must think I am a single mum so rarely does the Mrs take part in the school run. But on this day, Joshua was clutching a red dragon and also had a Welsh flag badge pinned to his chest next to the School Council badge and an owl badge which is, I think, a club for clever cloggses. Joahua and his pal R are clever cloggses now doing reading lessons with kids 2 years older than they are.

This is laughable.  The conclusion of a report out today on deaths during the great plague of 1348-50, aka the Black Death, in London is that  “higher death rates amongst people of colour and those of black African descent was a result of the “devastating effects” of “premodern structural racism” in the medieval world. Natch the BBC is delighted by this study from the Museum of London. But does the data actually support such a claim? What do you think?

The portrait below was one my father owned. On his demise I picked it up as nobody else wanted it. The writing in the top left-hand corner says that it is James Bertie, the 1^st Earl of Abingdon, a man who lived from 1653-99 and was a fairly important figure in 17^th century politics. But was this a genuine portrait and how did it come into our possession?

We didn’t buy Big Bear, pictured below. He was given to us by someone looking after the hiuse one summer. We just came home to find him sitting at the kitchen table with some pots of porridge in front of him. These days he sleeps in the same room as Joshua and Jaya but the Mrs and myself have been quite keen to give him to a charity shop. But now he has been saved.