The view from my bench

Today was the Birmingham Honey Show at Winterbourne Gardens, which means Winterbourne Gardens is free entry and also there’s honey. Plus one of my Birmingham-based cousins developed a beekeeping habit during the lockdowns and enters his honey in competition, so it’s become a defacto family gathering, especially now my sister is in town.

I probably shouldn’t have gone, given I was still recovering from Friday, but I’d enjoyed it in the past so figured we’d give it a go. Turned out to be way busier than I remembered and I struggled, to be honest, spending most of the hour we were in attendance lying on a bench with earplugs in and my cap over my eyes. At least I got to briefly touch base with the cousins and arrange for a more chilled catch-up another time.

• Gloria Steinem’s final essay🪜 — Two quotes jumped out to me. “Words that stand for equality are demonized by those who benefit from inequality." and “When you’re lucky enough to have lived a long life, your role as an older person is to remind us how far we have come."
• The young Welsh farmers growing food for Birmingham — Great to see the problem of access to land being addressed, and I particularly like how this project is trying to bypass the middle class veg boxes market and actually do something socially useful with the produce. But sidebar, is it me or do these young farmers look especially young? But then I was convinced this week’s Guardian Blind Date couple were in their late teens, and all my ‘young’ friends, who still look young to me, are turning 40, so what do I know.
• The £150bn megaproject that aims to protect Britain from energy shocks — A detailed overview of the upgrades needed for our electricity grid, something that should have been started years ago and is destined to become another tedious political battleground. Really good to see it all laid out like this.
• Canonizing Pope: The case for THB — I remember finding a copy of THB #1 in a comic shop in 1994 and it being a big deal, like someone exciting had just parachuted in with something we’d not seen before, a supercool exoticism that Pope was happy to push (to increasingly annoying effect). I’m not sure the actual THB story itself will hold up (schoolgirls on Mars? Really?) but I’ll probably revisit it when the final volume appears this December.
• 🎶 Half-Told Tales by Arab Strap — I’m really enjoying this second coming of Aidan and Malcolm, having been a big fan since hearing The First Big Weekend on the radio 30 years ago. Very much appreciate how they’ve avoided becoming a heritage act and are making important, essential work that merges their gloomy introspection with Sleaford Mods-style commentary. A few tracks on this album make me feel seen.