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Jeremy Benson

@jembenson.bsky.social
1.9K followers 3.4K following 6.7K posts

Adviser @aqaeducation.bsky.social, MAT and @RSPH.bsky.social trustee, ex-senior civil servant; classical music, #LCFC 🦊, England⚽️🏏, walks, photos, words; husband, father, generally curious substack.com/@jembenson 📍 Leicestershire, UK

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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 1h
A very Four Clubby Four Club for me. Wordle 1,937 4/6 🟨⬜⬜🟨🟨 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩⬜🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 4h
Very true. I wonder how many exoplanetary equivalents of @imcmillan.bsky.social there are pondering exoplanetary leaves as they stroll…?
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 7h
#AdoorableThursday Bugbrooke
Door to the church in Bugbrooke, Northants. It is very dark brown with two elaborate black metal hinges. Above is a rounded double arch of alternating lighter and darker stones. There is a faded stone shield above the door. The honey-coloured stone round the door is speckled with tree-shadows.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 7h
[leaves the debate there]
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 7h
Spoiler alert: yes he can.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 7h
There are very roughly as many trees on earth as there are galaxies in the universe (estimates of both are around 2-3 trillion), but each galaxy has millions of stars and trees don’t normally have that many leaves. So the stars have it!
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 16h
I’m definitely not one of those 🤣
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 16h
*deserve
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 16h
Sorry. It was a silly pun (gee-gee is slang for horse) which doesn’t a moment’s attention.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 17h
Is that a G-G flat race…?
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 17h
The music was very beautiful. (Also the church is the wrong way round - the chancel is at the west end, which I found quite disconcerting)
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 17h
If you…don’t know what side your bread’s buttered…? (sorry)
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 19h
‘Also, be a tortoise’
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 19h
@rachelparris.bsky.social ⬆️
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 19h
To St James's, Spanish Place for a not-at-Wigmore-Hall @wigmore-hall.org.uk concert featuring The Sixteen conducted by Harry Christopher’s singing Lassus, Brunel, Des Prez and de Chatelet. Expecting great and ethereal sounds. 🎶
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Lucky third guess left me with only one likely option. Four Club. Wordle 1,936 4/6 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
We need to stay vigilant though as night could yet fall again
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Early surrealstroll. Vans drizzles vanly. The confidence of a new leaf. Bread autumnfalls on my back. Three trucks on a wall’s head. A man unloads hi-vis autumn from a ladder.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Former doors: an occasional series. #exdoors
A bricked-up doorway with a rounded arch above in a brick wall, and grass beneath.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
It was in the dim distant past of first thing this morning, but apparently this is what I did, so I’ve been in Four Club today too. Wordle 1,935 4/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Reposted by Jeremy Benson
Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This ancient Greek figure from the 2,500 year-old Douris Cup looks uncannily like someone working on a laptop! 😲 💻 He’s actually writing with a stylus on a hinged wax writing tablet! The technology has changed, the posture has not! 😂 Altes Museum, Berlin 📷 by me
My photo shows detail from an ancient Greek red-figure kylix (drinking cup) of a young man shown in profile seated on a stool facing right. He wears a knee length cloak (himation) over his left shoulder, which is shown in folds around his waist and upper legs. His right shoulder, chest, and arms are bare. His dark hair is short, and he wears a band around his head. He is looking down at an open rectangular wax writing tablet which he is supporting in his left hand above his lap. In his right hand he holds a metal stylus pen poised over the writing tablet. The wooden writing tablet is hinged like a book and, from this angle, resembles a modern laptop. The figure is part of a scene depicting school lessons in ancient Athens, painted by Douris around 480 BC. On display at the Altes Museum in Berlin.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Here is the rather magnificent Birmingham Town Hall, which features heavily in the programme, a few Christmases ago.
The 1834 Birmingham Town Hall at night, with Christmas crowds beneath. It is faced with marble, and looks like a Corinthian temple, with columns all the way round.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Both my kids studied music in Birmingham, so I enjoyed this Key Changes, looking at music in the city, & more generally at Victorian music-making & the influence of the industrial revolution. Good to have a piece from (Birmingham-born) Dorothy Howell to finish things off (cc @leahbroad.bsky.social).
bbc.co.uk
Key Changes: Radio 3's Essential History of Classical Music - 1846: A Birmingham Oratorio - BBC Sounds
1846, Birmingham. The premiere of Mendelssohn's Elijah puts the city on the musical map.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Late stroll. A bin solemnly guards a lampost. The lopsided moon in the sky ponders the perfectly round moon on a stick, which looms over a traffic island. In the windless streetlight the path through the park is an intriguing corridor. Leaves show off their greenness. @imcmillan.bsky.social
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Did we need another #Mahler 2 from Simon Rattle? Emphatically yes - this is stunning. Crucially the 1st movement is c2 minutes faster than his previous two recordings - I don’t know if that’s because it’s live or whether he’s rethought, but it gives it a sense of impetus sometimes missing before. 🎶
Album cover of the new Rattle Mahler 2 with the Bavarian Radio SO, Beth Taylor and Louise Alder on the BR Klassik label.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I sauntered into Four Club on the back of my second word. Wordle 1,934 4/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜⬜⬜ 🟩🟩⬜🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Jonathan Wilson @jonawils.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
City should be stripped of titles and the roll of honour left blank. www.theguardian.com/football/202...
theguardian.com
Let there be blanks instead of Manchester City’s name on trophies: there was no honour there | Jonathan Wilson
The spaces can stand as a memorial to these lost years both as a rebuke to an era of greed but also a tribute to the Premier League’s hunt for justice
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Yes, nutmeg or something like that I think.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Richard Ayoade notably channelling Baldrick there.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Reminds me of a game I played with my work team during Covid to find the most out-of-date thing we could in our kitchens: one of my colleagues found something that was best before sometime in 1998, and then cheerfully announced that she hadn’t been born then…
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Surely this policy will change that though…? 😉
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
static.klipy.com
The Internet Box: IT Crowd Technology
Alt: The Internet Box: IT Crowd Technology
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Same.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Yeah the sky’s rippling a bit though 🤣 Hope you feel better tomorrow
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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 04/10/2026
Conference chat. "My parents don't really understand the internet. My mum was born in, like, 1975."
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It’s quite a subtle change. It’s an idea I borrowed, I think, from @mirandakeeling.com.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
🙄
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Did we need another #Mahler 2 from Simon Rattle? Emphatically yes - this is stunning. Crucially the 1st movement is c2 minutes faster than his previous two recordings - I don’t know if that’s because it’s live or whether he’s rethought, but it gives it a sense of impetus sometimes missing before. 🎶
Album cover of the new Rattle Mahler 2 with the Bavarian Radio SO, Beth Taylor and Louise Alder on the BR Klassik label.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The 2015 UKIP manifesto, meanwhile, wanted to reintroduce three tiers into GCSE maths, which must be a contender for the most absurdly niche manifesto commitment ever made.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I commuted on these trains for many years. Here’s one in 2019 (I was actually taking a picture of the station - this was the last train I got before it was modernised).
A HST departing north from Market Harborough station, 24th May 2019.
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Justin on eurostar @eurostarjustin.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
On this day 50 years ago, the revolutionary British Rail Inter-City 125 entered service. Fantastic to see a set restored into 1980s livery arrive at Manchester Piccadilly this afternoon. #TheJourneyShrinker
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Btw if you hadn’t noticed the picture is (deliberately) upside down.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Thanks! Yes I think that’s right.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
A year ago I left the civil service after thirty years. I wrote this about the walk through Green Park as part of a commute I must have done thousands of times.🚶🏻
jembenson.substack.com
The best commute in London?
If you need to get to Westminster from the north, my advice is to get off the London Underground at Green Park and walk.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Do you want to know if I saw a stile on my walk today @lakesstiles.bsky.social…?
A wooden stile in the sunshine surrounded by hedges, and with a brown field behind
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It wasn’t really a Faustian pact given they didn’t have a say over it: even those who were uneasy couldn’t do anything about it, and it would be harsh to expect lifelong fans to walk away from their club because of concerns about the ethics/financial practices of the owners (though maybe some did).
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
One of my personal walking challenges is to see how many villages I can walk to (and back) from home. Today I added a 21st, Theddingworth to the west (I’ve been there before, but not starting from home). Ideal walking weather: sunny but not too warm.
Marston Trussell church looming in the distance, much as it might have been seen to a medieval peasant approaching across the fields (though the footpath would not have been neatly marked then). There was a massacre of Royalist soldiers here following the Battle of Naseby.Trees by the road west of Marston Trussell.A tree with a long arched branch over the narrow country road, west of Marston Trussell.Two swans approaching on the canal. The picture is in black and white which emphasises the ripples behind them, and gives them a slightly menacing air.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It was a fabulous performance.
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I saw 6 at the Proms in the summer, hammer and all…
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Jeremy Benson @jembenson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I also wrote this about being a civil servant in Parliament, including the passage of legislation: along with the people, the thing I perhaps miss most having left the service of the Crown.
jembenson.substack.com
In the Box
I recently left the civil service after thirty years, and while I have no regrets, one thing I do miss - not least as a former politics student and an unapologetic constitutional geek - is the opportu...
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