Opera is not dying, Timothée, it's thriving. In Europe alone, 14m a year attend (2.5m under 25s) worth €10bn. Since 2000 La Traviata had 30,000 performances. In its lifetime it's been seen by half a billion people and recorded 291 times. Check back in 180yrs to see how Marty Supreme is doing, yeah?
It would be a really good thing for the competition for Scotland to win it - it needs that unpredictable edge. Remember, most pundits were predicting this would be between England and France at start of competition, with one of them winning a grand slam…..
The game in Rome wasn’t bad, either…. 😂
I think Steve is doing just fine. I support Wales….😂
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
there's so much bad in the world but there's also people who lift up and carry an elderly bat around every day so he can pretend he's flying again, and that's the part of the world I think is worth fighting for
I had no shadows from fence posts (or broom) but missed lack of number plate on the car…)
A monochrome ‘spot the mistake’ scene featuring a postman cycling along a lane besides a half timbered thatched cottage
An observation test for your inner 8-year-old.
Can you spot 12 deliberate mistakes?
From Treasure magazine, 1965
Official answers coming soon
(Even if you don’t reply, could you please ‘like’ or share this one?)
Knocking Dan « no-one will die of Covid - they really won’t « off his perch takes some doing….but I am confident Maurice will give it his best shot…..
My photo shows a Roman fresco of a brown rabbit with long ears, curled on the ground, with a rounded, soft-looking body. Its head is lowered as if nibbling at three figs placed in front of it. The figs are small and round with short stems, painted in dark reddish and bluish tones. From Pompeii. Now on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.
Here’s a charming Roman fresco of a little rabbit eating figs 🐰❤️
From Pompeii, 45-79 AD.
Now at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. 📷 by me
#FrescoFriday
#Archaeology
Easter bunnies arriving early 😂
🎯🎯
Detail of a Roman tomb wall with a semicircular painted lunette showing faded red and blue figures on a white background.
New discovery: A large burial ground dating from the Early Imperial Age to Late Antiquity has been uncovered in Rome’s Ostiense Necropolis during pre-construction works.
cultura.gov.it/comunicato/2...
Reform fury as someone else wins by Our By-election Editor Tim Shipsink The losing candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election, Matt Goodwhinge, has demanded an immediate re-run of the election on the grounds that he lost comprehensively to someone else. "It's totally unfair and rigged," said Goodwhinge. "I shouldn't be required to sit there and suck it up, just because I lost." Mr Goodwhine continued, *I can't believe that all those voters I demonised failed to back me. Especially after I was endorsed by Tommy Robinson and ten million Russian bots on X. "We have clear evidence of family voting, where people voted in order for me to stop deporting their families." Mr Badloser concluded. "I'm the victim of colour prejudice. They didn't vote for me simply because I'm not green." Reform leader Mr Farage, speaking from a sun lounger on a rock near the Chagos Islands said, "It's a tragedy that the people of Manchester won't see Matt in Westminster, but my constituents don't see me in Clacton either." PLUMBER DEFEATS MATT GOODWIN Photo of Hannah Spencer with speech bubble saying… I've stopped the cock
Beautiful from Private Eye on the massive toddler-tantrum that Matt Goodwin and Reform are having, because they got whooped in Gorton and Denton.
He's obviously right. The Tory position on this is nuts. Why on earth would you want to tie yourself to a President who is clearly not capable of rational decision making and has no idea what he's doing?
It's already not a popular conflict + it's only going to get less popular if it drags on.
That was 'I hate Manchester anyway' by Matt Goodwin and the White Supremes, from his Bitter Loser album.
Sent to me by one of my brothers
A photo of the front cover of issue 1670 of Private Eye magazine, with the caption “on shelves now.” The main headline reads “TRUMP ATTACKS IRAN,” with a subheading “HOW OPERATION EPIC FURY UNFOLDED.” The cover features four photo panels set in the situation-room with US political figures seated around a table. Speech bubbles add dialogue: “Is the Supreme Leader dead?” followed by “No, Trump always looks like this!”; “Mission accomplished!” answered with “Yes, I’ve killed the Epstein story”; “What happens next?” with the reply “Popular revolt and regime change,” and a follow-up, “In America?”; and finally, “Why have you started this war?” answered with “So that I can stop it,” alongside “I’ll ring the Nobel Committee.”
Trump Attacks Iran. How Operation Epic Fury unfolded…
The new Private Eye is out now.
The very same lady who is periodically enraged at the disappearance of our democracy…doesn’t want MPs she dislikes having a vote in parliament ?
Right, so the Conservative Party has given up on international law AND #democracy
www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...
This is important. Reform keep taking positions that are only supported by the 25% of the electorate they already have and in doing so are negatively polarising everyone else against them.
IPSO have published their verdict on The Daily Telegraph’s fake £345,000-a year banker couple who claimed they couldn’t afford five holidays.
The paper declined to explain to the watchdog how the article came to be published - but our reporting at the time sets it out…
I introduced them into the garden, and while very effective in reducing the number of playing card shaped encampments which were appearing overnight, my garden was absolutely littered with menhirs….‘not to mention the wild boar carcasses…..
Argghhh, just spotted a new #PlaymobilInfestation on my office bookshelf!!
They're already forming into a testudo 😱
#Playmobil #Roman #SendHelp
The Daily Mail is often slagged off for right wing hyperbole, stupid hysteria and over reaction.
But no one ever praises the paper for reasoned & logical articles like this one.
I’m absolutely 100% sure most Londoners wished they were living in the Middle East at the moment.
🤔
But unlike so many refugees, her trip back won’t be a harrowing experience at hands of people traffickers; she won’t have witnessed or experienced imprisonment or torture; she won’t be hungry on the journey. It will most likely be a first class flight.
The fact that Isabel Oakeshott, economic migrant to the UAE may just turn into a refugee fleeing to the UK from a war zone will cause a level of schadenfreude in me that may just make me topple right over.
"We called London a war zone and moved to Dubai by mistake"
My photo shows the so-called ‘Trier Gold Treasure’ in a museum display case. It is a Roman coin hoard made up of some 2,650 gold aurei. The small round gold coins are spread randomly in a dense pile across a light-coloured display case surface. To the upper right of the coin mound is the broken bowl-shaped bottom of the original copper alloy vessel that held the hoard. The metal is coloured green with corrosion. Several gold coins are scattered inside the bowl. In the lower left corner of the display case is another large, irregular fragment of the original container. Museum information label: In 1993, a bronze vessel with 2650 Roman gold coins (aurei) is discovered in Trier. It is the largest Roman gold coin treasure ever found. The Aureus was in the 1st and 2nd Century the standard coin of the Roman gold minting with an average weight of 7.27 g, with a very high fineness of approx. 980/1000. The coins depict 29 different emperors, empresses or relatives of the imperial house. The oldest coins were minted between 63 and 64 AD, the youngest between 193 and 196 AD. The coins were inside the vessel, which was accidentally discovered by an excavator, rolled up in leather bags. The bags were decorated with leather straps and closed enamel seal capsules. The treasure revealed numerous secrets in its scientific processing: it probably did not represent private assets, but a state treasury that was carefully managed and over a longer period of time and enlarged. During a civil war, the gold coins were finally buried in a cellar in 196 AD and then fell into oblivion. Presumably the former administrator of the treasury took his knowledge of the hiding place with him to the grave.
The Trier Gold Hoard!
The largest #Roman gold coin hoard ever found!
More than 2,650 Roman aurei, weighing 18.5 kg, were discovered inside a bronze vessel wrapped in leather bags, during construction work in 1993. The coins date from 63 AD to 196 AD.
Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier 📷 by me
1000s of public domain films that you can stream, no ads!
www.openculture.com/2026/01/stre...
FAO NIGEL FARAGE!
Joseph Conrad
Vivien Leigh
Gerald Durrell
T.S. Eliot
Rudyard Kipling
Joanna Lumley
Freddie Mercury
George Orwell
Tessa Sanderson
J.R.R. Tolkien
Mo Salah
All unable to vote despite their contribution to our country because they were born outside the UK.
🤔😡
