Davenant 📸

Our Rebellion! exhibition exploring protest as part of our cultural identity, in the face of draconian anti-protest legislation, opens on the 23rd of October at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead.

Have to admit I did mock the old Grantium system from @artscouncilengland.bsky.social for being like something out of the Stone Age, but their new grant application portal is really good and easy to use. All credit to them for fixing it so well.

People seem to be buying baked beans and drinking water in response to the advice to stockpile. However nobody is talking about what to do when you’ve eaten vast quantities of those baked beans and there’s no water to flush the toilet 🤔 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Early stroll. The moon is earth’s reading light. I imagine sewing those fallen leaves into a shirt for Jack O’the Hedge. The emptiness of the empty house. A puddle in the shape of a diplodocus. Old footprints in old concrete.

Living With The Sea This is work I did (exactly 20 years ago) & may give you a brief glimpse into the lives of a couple of families who work on the Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland. Visit this bay at high tide, it looks wild and empty, but as the tide falls... 1/11

"If it comes down to a choice between wolves and livestock on western public lands, the clear winner is wolves. Let’s extend the benefits all across the American West. The case for leasing public lands for livestock production? That’s a tougher sell." Read more: https://ow.ly/ZPuK51014Qu

When I rhapsodise about gulls there's always someone who says, "You just wait until one swoops down and steals your sandwich." But that already happened. I thought it was hugely technically impressive and tinged with comic genius and it made me like gulls even more. What should I wait for next?

The current dilemma for most creatives now is that you need to share work online for your business to survive but if you do, it will immediately be stolen and replicated by AI and it's quite possible your business won't survive that

The main purpose of AI is to steal earnings from working people, along with the associated taxes, and hand the money to unaccountable billionaires and corporations. Any society which relies on philanthropy has failed.

There was a time my bit of ground Made freeman of the slave, The ass no pounder'd dare to pound When I his supper gave. The gipsy's camp was not afraid, I made his dwelling free, Till vile enclosure came, and made A parish slave of me. The Lament of Swordy Well. John Clare.

It's been a while...

Yes. Martin Luther KIng Jr said this back in 1963 “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

Latest from me: on finding fascination, even now, (eg The Wire, Sight & Sound, MOJO) in your town's WH Smith (sorry, "TG Jones"), and the tragedy now unfolding. Result: algorithm culture, the leakage from headphones playing the same things over & over again www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Early stroll. A cyclist’s red rear light fading, fading. Someone watching a weather forecast on a TV as big as the sky. The horse isn’t there, or maybe it’s there but invisible. A tomato on a double yellow line. I say ‘Good morning’ to the bloke who never replies; he doesn’t reply.

I like sailing. It goes back to the whole basics of the experience. You are more in touch with why your ship is moving and how you affect the ship moving. 

On a big metal ship with an engine, the engine goes ... That's not a big connection really. robertgumpert.com/from-the-hir...

See you all later for The Verb! Kettle on!

Early stroll. Percussive, propulsive rain. A whirlpool of leaves. Puddles as bonsai oceans. The wind keeps pulling my cagoule hood off. That hopping blackbird has been stealing oranges.

Thanks to Jade Cuttle for a very thoughtful review of my new book in The Observer.

Walked into The Vinyl Diner on Broadway in Saskatoon today, on a grey, wintry, blustery day and heard “I’m a dinosaur. Somebody is digging my bones,” and it lifted my mood instantly, especially as it was a mint version of the 2019 remaster that I walked out with.

THREAD. I've been feeling bad that Jim (tomcox.substack.com/p/jim-an-ins...) & Roscoe (tomcox.substack.com/p/at-home-wi...) have had all the attention recently so I wanted to say a bit about our other cat, Professor Charles Cardigan, who is also an uncompromising individual & fabulous companion...

OCTOBER 31, US EMBASSY Over 400 people will gather outside the US Embassy and hold signs reading "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action", days before the Supreme Court hearing on the Palestine Action ban. Burnham must drop this "Trumpian ban".

Peaceful protesters yesterday, writing the words on their placards which will convert them from ordinary citizens to terrorists in the eyes of the government and the law. Words which put them in the same legal group as Osama bin Laden. The rank absurdity of Cooper’s decision captured in one photo.

Oddly, I can’t increase the font size on my notifications; I’ve put it to ‘larger’ in my settings but it seems to make no difference. Any tips?

Early stroll. The upstairs light that is always on is on. The sky is a blank canvas waiting to be filled. My shadow walks through a tree’s shadow. There is artificial grass outside the barber’s. A puddle like a Salvador Dali melted watch.

I am feeling the Keminaissance. Behold: mainstream British politics.

🎃Thei did the Mash; thei did the Monstere Mash. The Monstere Mash! Beholde: sepulchral smash! Thei did the Mash, and it kaughte on moost fast - Hark, heare the Mash! Forsooth, the Monstere Mash!🎃

I found out about this one at the opening of the Rebellion! exhibition and am going to do my best to be there to document these arrests.

Dr Matthew in front of the photo of him being arrested for peacefully protesting against the proscription of Palestine Action. Private view of our Rebellion! exhibition at the Williamson Art Gallery yesterday. A man of principle and it was a pleasure to meet him in person.

See you all later for the joy of poetry and song at Darfield Museum!

“The killer awoke before dawn. She put her boots on. She took a face from the ancient gallery. And she walked on down the hall.” tomcox.substack.com/p/at-home-wi...

Early stroll. I think of that old bus shelter as an architect’s dream, frozen in time. A dropped full bottle of water, as though rain has been delivered. I’m bench-tempted. A grinning letterbox. Is that running cat an incident? Maybe.

The week peters out Like water down a plughole And the weekend looms

All art, even the moost abstract written art, ys direct intervencioun ynto the material worlde by a being wyth a brayne pumped full of oxygenated bloode, heir to the errours and miracles of yeares we kan not even ymagine. Machynes have materialitye too but confuse not the glove wyth the human hande.

the idea phase is the easiest and least valuable part of professional creativity. read the first draft of the first Star Wars if you doubt me Great art is made in the grinding, often miserable collision between the ethereal substance of an idea and the mud and blood and friction of reality

Photography exhibition at Williamson Art Gallery explores role of protest in contemporary Britain www.birkenhead.news/photography-...

After BOP there are now just 8 copies left of the 1st edition (of 200) of my zine 'On the Road'. www.marcwilson.co.uk/book-print-s...

Come on, how much does it cost to run Radio 4 Extra? Like half a crown a day? They're fucking repeats. We ought to be massively funding the BBC for the same reason we should be protecting our universities. Soft power makes money. #REFUNDTHEBBC #SCRAPTHELICENCEFEEBYALLMEANSBUTPUMPITINYOUFUCKINGTWITS

NEW unitednationsofphotography.com/2026/10/21/d...

Early stroll. Patterns of fallen leaves greet me. The redness of a parked van. That car is almost going too fast for its wheels. Someone stands and lights a cigarette on the hill. I see the hooded man at the bus stop; streets later, I see him on the bus.

A speaker from Liberty will open our Rebellion! exhibition, on the importance of protest as part of our cultural identity, this evening at the Williamson Art Gallery.

In wet plate photography, orange appears black because the silver-based chemicals on the plate suffer (like me) from colour blindness to long light wavelengths. Because the chemistry cannot register these wavelengths 🍊 elements do not expose the plate at all. Chemistry lesson over. Here's the magic

“When I look round the boardroom at the other board members Palantir has recently also recruited from the House of Lords – notably Lord Vader and Lord Voldemort – I don’t have any sense that these people are evil,” said Watson. From the new Private Eye, out now.

Those links between words: Bridges across silences For poets to walk