Rich Thomas
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richpthomas.bsky.social
Rich Thomas
@richpthomas.bsky.social
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇪🇺🏳️‍🌈 Dysgwr Cymraeg yn Llundain. Witty alt text makes my day
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?
November 6, 2025 at 10:05 PM
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
October 25, 2025 at 1:54 PM
That’s so upsett’n
September 5, 2025 at 10:28 PM
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
July 17, 2025 at 9:04 AM
July 10, 2025 at 8:55 PM
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
June 13, 2025 at 7:17 AM
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
June 13, 2025 at 7:14 AM
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
June 13, 2025 at 7:05 AM
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
June 12, 2025 at 9:50 PM
My week has mainly been composed of flamenco-adjacent pop gigs, y estoy AQUÍ para ellas 💃🏻🇪🇸
June 8, 2025 at 12:07 AM
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
May 29, 2025 at 8:10 PM
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
April 30, 2025 at 9:10 PM
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
April 30, 2025 at 9:03 PM
We have a new neighbour. Hello, curious void!
April 2, 2025 at 6:57 PM
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
March 23, 2025 at 6:07 PM

𝙷𝙴𝙽𝙳𝙾𝙽
𝙲𝙴𝙽𝚃𝚁𝙰𝙻
' '
𝚅
March 8, 2025 at 10:41 PM
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
March 8, 2025 at 5:21 PM
Turns out I really needed this tonight 🫠

(Feet on main etc etc)
February 26, 2025 at 10:05 PM
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
February 26, 2025 at 10:00 PM
I mean no offence to New Yorkers but come ON—
February 20, 2025 at 10:41 PM
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
February 20, 2025 at 10:36 PM
February 18, 2025 at 10:59 PM
February 13, 2025 at 11:00 PM
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 😭😭
February 13, 2025 at 11:01 AM
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 😭😭🥹
February 12, 2025 at 10:31 PM