iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I really hope mine doesn’t update overnight to be more like yours

The weather forecast for four days next week. It is hot but not *that* hot

Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

The best part: it never got thrown out, and it’s complete and working. Now all I need to do is find space for it in my flat…

A big box of Lego, set 6399: the airport monorail of dreams

An open Lego box on a large table with instructions, various pieces sorted by colour, and oh in the background there’s one of the assembled train carriages how cute

Lego train carriage on top of its instructions

The completed set on a teak midcentury dining table

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Aww. I must’ve killed mine, for the robot is sad

A sad error-404 robot is sad. Their head is, adorably, a cassette tape

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Oh! This works for different sizes of the same word too, I think. You’re on the plane, unless it’s a diddy lil’ Twin Otter or similar, in which case you’re in it instead

A small twin-engine propellor plane comes into land somewhere sunny. It does not, in fact, look like an otter

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

What a beautiful timeline pairing

A tweet from Lewis Goodall that says NEW: Nathan Gill, Reform’s former leader in Wales, sentenced to 10.5 years in prison over pro-Russia bribes. It’s immediately followed by a tweet from Susie Dent, posted one minute earlier, that says Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a puppet politician whose strings are pulled entirely by someone else. Obviously Susie is being v timely and current-affairsy with her word of the day, but to see it *immediately* next to said current affairs is delightfully chef’s-kiss

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

Straub is the one I have no idea of. But wait! I have a cute lil’ moquette book to look it up in. I also don’t recognise the upper Crossrail one, the colourway mainly. Is it a variant on the (pretty useless) v1.0 priority-seat design perhaps?

A man in a vest and glasses sits in a cosy corner, holding up a small paperback book called ‘Seats of London’. The cover has a photo of a load of tube seats in different upholsteries—that’s ‘moquettes’ to you and me—and the man, dear reader, is me

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

Shoutout to our super-friendly & helpful local ironmonger/hardware shop who, when I was struggling and failing to find a sufficiently small spanner to tighten these bolts on the bed, suggested wingnuts instead and gave me two free. Try that level of service in Wilko’s. Love your local high street <3

A nut at the end of a bolt, inside a circular recess on a wooden bed frame. The recess is helpfully too small to get the head of a spanner inside to tighten it. Presumably when we assembled the bed a decade ago it came with a little tool to get inside here, that has since been lost

The same recess with the same bolt, now topped off with a wingnut that’ll be a piece of piss to hand-tighten

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 17/07/2025

After seven years of uncertainty and three hugely disruptive years of works, I am OVERJOYED to wake up to news from our management company confirming the flats are no longer Likely to Support Combustion. Cladding hell is over*! 🥳🥳🥳 * HUGE solidarity to all of you for which it still very much isn’t

A balcony covered in protective sheeting and much, much scaffolding, giving the appearance nay the ACTUALITY of living in a building site. What you can’t see from the image is that it was taken through a 5cm gap in the window, as this was all we were able to open any window in the flat for a year. A YEAR. Oh the photo was taken on film so it’s got a lovely subtle grain and colour

A fully-Remediated balcony with shiny new white wall panels and a wood-looking slatted brise soleil that is actually now very cleverly disguised aluminium. None of these materials are now potentially lethal, hurray! The furniture is returned, plants restocked, the decking freshly oiled, and the windows WIDE OPEN oh my god the bliss. This looks like a lovely place to sit of a summer evening

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

And then book 13, back to the twentieth-century classics. It having been years since I’d read this, I was bemused and delighted at how many elements I thought ‘oh that seems surprisingly derivative’ before realising that no, this was the ur-text for them all. Gripping, unnerving, excellent

A green-hued copy of 1984, the cover of which is a pair of eyes staring out as if into the lens of a CCTV camera. I’m holding it up in front of my face so the eyes are my eyes, all creepy-like

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Book 12 was a change of pace back to ‘light travel-related fluff’, and one man’s comedy attempts to gain a top twenty hit in Nashville, Sudan, the Hague, Bucharest, and Norman Wisdom’s spiritual home, Tirana. A light and breezy thing to sail through before sending off to the chazza

The author-signed frontispiece of a paperback copy of One Hit Wonderland by, if you can read the biro scribble, Tony Hawks. I forgot to take a photo of my copy before I turned it out, but someone on eBay had a photo of the same edition with the same surprise author’s signature, so here we are

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Oh yes, forgot about this thread didn’t I? For book 11 I went to 1920s France, for this lyrical, dreamlike slip of a thing

A paperback copy of Les Enfants Terribles, sitting on a wooden bar with a glass of wine behind it. Someone’s about to have tapas

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

At @tate.bsky.social Modern tonight for a hugely moving, poignant, galvanising talk+viewing of the UK AIDS memorial quilt. It’s on display in the Turbine Hall until Sunday and oh *my* it’s important. It hit me like a ton of bricks. If you can, go

A colourful patchwork quilt, laid out in three large strips on the floor of the cavernous Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, as seen from a balcony above. People are walking slowly alongside it, taking in the monumentality and the detail. Each panel is a personal commemoration of a friend, family member or other loved one lost to AIDS in the nineties. Quite a few people were moved to tears, including your dear author

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

My week has mainly been composed of flamenco-adjacent pop gigs, y estoy AQUÍ para ellas 💃🏻🇪🇸

A quartet of flamenco performers strum their guitars and are generally virtuousic under the glow of spotlights shining on a giant mirrorball suspended from the ceiling

A pair of chairs sit on a stage at Sadlers Wells, bathed in red light

A band play on stage, illuminated by dappled orangey-red light, with a giant mirrorball above them

A band play on stage while the crowd goes WILD

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Mum & Dad are preparing to move house, for the first time in FORTY-THREE YEARS. Cue lots of time spent sorting through decades of memories (and Lego), and wistfully enjoying every moment spent in the house on these final visits because there aren’t going to be any more

My brother loads the boot of the car outside a large detached suburban house. He is being as sensible as befits a forty-nine-year-old

Three bird feeders hang silhouetted against an upward view of houses, bright in the sunshine, and a lovely blue sky

Some daffodils in pots on the front drive. The combination of sunny day and 35mm film camera make them positively luminous

Some items on the side in a living room: a camera, family photos, a plant in a ceramic pot. The scene is suburban and familial and warm

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

And for book 10 I was back in the ‘20thC classics’ aisle, with Lord of the Flies. I’d forgotten how it’s subtly set in a speculative-fiction near-future world of nuclear war, albeit still *very* much in the fifties, tally-ho pip pip what-o. The cover makes the desert island look bafflingly pleasant

A slightly knackered paperback of Lord of the Flies, gloriously late-90s in design with an oversaturated full-cover photo of the platonic ideal of a desert island. Balmy waters, bowing beachside palms, idyllic sunset—it’s basically a Sandals ad circa 1997 (back when they were properly homophobic, anyone else remember that?)

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Okay I totally forgot to keep up with this didn’t I? Book 9 was another book by Ferguson, all about Canada, eh? Actually posting this now is suddenly quite timely. Might look up his other books; he’s gently entertaining and witty

A paperback of Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw by Will Ferguson sits propped up in the green velvet corner chair. Its cover design is graphically plain and bold, a yellow background with a photo of what the foreword to this UK edition helpfully tells us is what Canadians call a ‘toque’, ie. a woolly beanie. This one has a pom-pom on it, although it still looks more like a beanie with a pom-pom than a bobble hat to me

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

We have a new neighbour. Hello, curious void!

A black cat sitting directly outside our balcony door, looking in through the glass. It’s a void of a kitty, a silhouette with only eyes visible

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Book 8 is a hefty chunk (though mainly due to oddly thick paper; what feels like a 600-odd pager is only about 420). I vaguely remembered some bits from when I first read this maybe 20 years ago—plenty of humour and gentle ruminations on what makes people so interesting and unique. とても面白い

A chunky paperback sits on a coffee table next to a cup of coffee. The graphic design of the cover is bold, striking, and very late-90s

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

↓ 𝙷𝙴𝙽𝙳𝙾𝙽 𝙲𝙴𝙽𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙻 ' ' 𝚅

A line diagram on the tube, half ripped off. On the ripped-off part someone has made an annotation in cute lil’ red pen

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

Book 7 was more of a slog to get through than I’d anticipated. Heavy in overwrought descriptions and monologues and moralistic pearl-clutching, with an unexpected turn towards Christian flagellation and James T Kirk I-need-my-pain right at the end. Sorry, I just don’t get why it’s so lauded

A weathered paperback of Brave New World, with stylish and colourful cover art that’s maybe cubist-adjacent? I dunno

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Turns out I really needed this tonight 🫠 (Feet on main etc etc)

A pair of feet poke out from the hot bubbles

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Forgot to post about book 6, which I finished shortly after holiday. Sort of a memoir to wide-eyed youth, a travelling exploration of bathing and steaming in Turkey, Russia, Finland, Japan. Soak and steam and sweat and, well, flagellate with birch. Maybe I’ll pass on that last bit

A paperback of Cathedrals of the Flesh, its cover illustrated with a photo of some people lounging in a majestic 19th-century-looking indoor swimming pool, all grand proportions and marble and tile. The book’s being held in front of the rather smaller bath in my flat, filled with bubbles

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

I mean no offence to New Yorkers but come ON—

A side view of a New York subway train. It’s the very latest model, introduced in 2023 so Wikipedia tells me, but with its stainless-steel sides, tiny clunkily-framed windows, small inset doors and random assemblage of boxes and pipes underneath the floor it basically looks like what you imagine a New York subway train from the grim, grimy, dangerous days of the 1970s and 80s looked like

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

I was and they were! I *definitely* got that 2000s-but-feels-80s sense—and even newer, like how much of the interior design of those new Kintetsu trains you wrote about for RGN looks so 1980s. In a similar way to how even the MTA’s most state-of-the-art new subway trains look so ancient to Euro eyes

A side-on view of a Japanese commuter train standing at the platform. It’s all very new and pristinely clean—I’m sure you could eat your dinner off it without ill effect—but with all its stainless steel and 1980s graphics it looks quite a lot older than it actually is

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Hmph. The first daffodils I get this year that actually open gloriously (and with an extra stem per bunch too; go M&S)… and it turns out Seiriol might be allergic so I’ve had to banish them to the communal hallway by the lifts 😭😭

A cheery bunch of daffodils in a green glass vase, sitting out on the naughty step, aka a bit of balcony/wintergarden outside my flat

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 12/02/2025

Book 5, aka book 4.1, was a fab holiday follow-up. I wasn’t expecting to be all teary at the end of this story of perseverance and making the best fist of things and that one brief transient moment when everything is forgiven and it’s as close to a happy ending as you can get 😭😭🥹

A paperback copy of Battle Beyond the Dolestars, all Jetsons art with an adorable anthropomorphised continuous-feed printer, a Grand Day Out-style rocket, and an I Dream of Jeannie-type cat. (Was there a cat in I Dream of Jeannie? I don’t know actually. But that typeface is defo Jeannie-inspired.) Oh and it’s held in a hand in front of a cocktail on a table on a poolside terrace in front of a delightfully evening-lit hotel did I mention I went on holiday?

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Artist-campaigner-architect-adjacent César Manrique was responsible for multiple striking, built-environment-meets-nature-and-traditional-vernacular buildings/attractions/landscapes across the island from the 1960s through to the early 90s. I loved them all

A traditional gofio-milling windmill sits at the top of the ridge overlooking a garden full of cacti of all different shapes and sizes

Okay this one’s really hard to describe; it’s part of a long lava tube leading from volcano towards ocean, part of which has flooded and parts of which have had their roofs fall in to open them up to the sky. We’re looking down at a pool of still, dark, slightly milky water, within which live a unique species of tiny blind white crabs endemic to here and here alone (although they’re really smol so they’re not visible in this pic); it’s surrounded by a cavelike rock formation that sort of forms an open-ended tube, and at said open ends are some delightful terraces with planting and tourists

This one’s easier to describe: enigmatic eye-like window cut into a high rock forms the basis of a viewpoint, with amazing views over a strait towards the sandy island I mentioned earlier. Binoculars at the ready

Below a whitewashed house—as in, it’s effectively the house’s basement—is a great big natural hole formed in the volcanic rock. In said hole is a gloriously hedonistic 1960s oasis of whitewashed floor, sparkling blue swimming pool, palm trees, and lucite-and-orange-cushion pod chairs hanging from a log. Peace out.

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Lanzarote is GORGEOUS. Really really captivating—it’s basically one massive extinct-volcano-lava-field moonscape

A field of volcanic rock stretches way off into the distance, all dry browns and greys and beiges; in the background are the telltale conical hills of extinction volcanos, all rust-coloured and enigmatic. The sky is bright blue with wispy clouds; otherwise you could be convinced you were on Mars. Okay I said the moon in the tweet, but all these rusty reds are quite marslike

A crescent-shaped algae-green lagoon sits below some craggy rocks cliffs; to its right is a black-volcanic-sand beach, and in the foreground are some ridiculously red rocks. All of the colours

Looking down from a high viewpoint across a strait of water at a small–medium-sized island. It looks parched and sandy, with just one whitewashed town and lots of open space

There’s blue sky with fluffy clouds, a windswept palm tree and a couple of buildings, and a field of dramatic mostly-grey volcanic rock lumpily coming towards the camera and WAIT A MINUTE we’re looking at this scene from inside a building through a big picture window, and yet THE LAVA ROCKS COME THROUGH THE WINDOW. A couple of cacti sit nonchalantly growing in the lava rock, on the inside side of the glass

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

In case you missed my Insta-story spamming, Seiriol & I went to Lanzarote and had a gorgeous time and here are some photos of us having a gorgeous time

Rich takes a selfie in the sun, with sunnies on, standing in front of some salt pans in the background. It’s a sunny day and he’s being a slut in a vest

Seiriol stands by some volcanic rocks, the splashy Atlantic in the background. They’re looking effortlessly dashing in orange-and-white casual shirt and sunnies

Seiriol & Rich take a selfie in a cactus garden nestled in an old quarry

Seiriol relaxes in a chair at a seaside bar, reading a book and enjoying a glass of sangria

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Book 4, and I’m on holiday so need some holiday reading. Actually re-reading, as I first read this while crumbling over some ancient ruins on Sicily. It’s delightfully silly, camp, feminist sci-fi nonsense and I love it 🤖

A paperback of Battlestar Suburbia, the cover art for which is Jetsons-spectacular, held up in front of what look like palm trees and gardens and a swimming pool. Friends fear she’s on holiday again

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Book 3, and time for some warm cosy travel-related self-help and cultural exchange. I quite empathised with the author’s husband, Lego Man

A paperback of A Year of Living Danishly, complete with bright and jaunty yellow text in a big bold Helvetica, held against a bright and jaunty yellow wall. Perfect for brightening your mood in the middle of winter

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Look. LOOK. Hmph. This is the best this lot are going to get

Some daffodils in a pale green glass vase, in front of a happy yellow wall. The wall is bringing more brightness than the daffs, some of which are just about half-open and some of which are still in their buds

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

Book #2: the Times Of London may be frequently awful, but their reviewer wasn’t wrong. Early-middle-aged former punk type meanders around the UK by rail in the mid-2000s, so is leftily gently scathing of Railtrack and Blair and whatnot. It’s warm and irreverent and memoir-y. Full steam ahead.

A paperback book, Parallel Lines by Ian Marchant, resting on a green velvet chair

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

We have way too many books cluttering up the bookcase, so I’ve resolved to read-then-charity-shop a load of them. Some have sat unread since I got them 🥲, but others are books I enjoyed years ago and wanted to revisit. 2024’s first read: wonderful Bill Bryson, just as witty and warm as I remember

Paperback of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, sitting on my parents’ kitchen counter

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Hello Honshu! I'm very much hoping to return and start expanding this web... 🇯🇵

A map of Honshu, Japan's biggest island, with shinkansen lines from Wakayama through Osaka to Tokyo coloured in, plus quite a few slower trains and, if you squint, plenty of smudges of urban rail in Osaka and Tokyo. But there's plenty of empty space left for future exploration

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I blame @squawkbox.uk for getting me into this 'mapping all my rail trips' game, via @jonworth.eu's guide. So much still to colour in... u.osmfr.org/m/1160808/ if you want to have a closer look

A map of western & central Europe with a few rail lines coloured in, showing where I've travelled. Lots of England & Wales, a few major axes through France and into Switzerland and Italy, and several little smudges of metro travels in various cities. Lots and lots of empty space, as unlike everyone else doing this, I've yet to go interrailing

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Today was absolutely perfect for apricity 🌞 Seiriol & I met up with my brother and his family for a country-park dog-walk and general amble, and it was 👌🏼

My brother, in flat cap and checked shirt, and sister-in-law, in cosy coat and dog on a lead. In the background my teenage nephew is looking over a wire fence at some sheep. We’re in a country park and the sky is BLUE. It’s wintery and crisp and really quite lovely

Boyfriend and teenage niece walk ahead in the distance on a path through some woods. The trees are dramatically knurled and leafless, and the sun is glinting through them, casting fun shadows on the muddy ground

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

What fresh captcha hell is this?

A captcha login test designed to stop bots from logging in, only humans. Except this is the most ridiculous login hurdle you’ve ever seen. It instructs the user to “click the image matching an object shown in the example image”. It’s unclear which image is the example image, and which one you should be clicking in, as there’s a row of three small black-and-white images at the top with a single large colour image below. The three black-and-white ones each have a cartoony drawing of a bus and a cartoony drawing of a chicken (or is it a cockerel? I dunno.) The main, colour image is a weird collage of little photos pinned to a yellow pinboard-type background, across which also run fragments of different-coloured lines, all hither and thither, for no discernible reason. And then you look at the little photos and realise OH GOD THEY’RE ARTIFICIALLY GENERATED. Each one is a little AI slop of a guitar, or a sheep, maybe, or actually that one looks like a chicken I guess I’m meant to click that one? This example I’ve screenshotted is actually significantly clearer than the other one I saw, which made those muddy AI images of gently deformed people with six fingers look a model of clarity and beauty.

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

A couple of Japanese ingredients + sake from my brother & sister-in-law for my birthday made the perfect excuse to crack open the Doctor Yellow chopsticks and the cute little sake bowls and jug 😍

The wooden table is set with a red festive runner. On it are some dipping bowls of oil, soy sauce and wasabi, and a tray of gyoza. And there’s an adorable little jug full of sake, and two tiny bowls to sip said sake from

A macro close-up of a pair of chopsticks on a table. The chopsticks are yellow, pointy, and bear a striking resemblance to a Japanese high-speed train OMG THEY LOOK JUST LIKE DOCTOR YELLOW THE TRACK INSPECTION TRAIN. These are the nerdiest chopsticks ever. And I just noticed this very evening that one has headlights and one has taillights—such attention to detail!

The table now has the main course on it—grilled marinaded (marinated?) chicken, green beans and spinach in what BBC Good Food tells me is a Japanese-style dressing of sesame, soy, mirin and assorted other deliciousness, and a pan of Japanese-style sushi rice. The plates are ready and waiting with the chopsticks, one pair Doctor Yellow and the other pair kawaii cats

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Rich Thomas @richpthomas.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Oh hello new social network. Here I am, last night, with another social network of mine. It’s giving thanks, it’s giving friendship, it’s giving new-home celebration [nb. new home is not mine]

Eleanor, Seiriol, Nick, Xavi, Kyle & Rich sit around a table and take a photo, selfie-style. Everyone is happy. The table (which is midcentury and rosewood don’tcha know) is groaning with gorgeous food made with love by Eleanor. Candles gleam candle-ly. Life is good.

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