You can still visit Stonehenge for the solstice by taking public transport. There will be regular buses running from Amesbury and Salisbury.
See the @SalisburyReds website for more info: https://t.co/NTwV6KooxY
“The wild briar rose and elder are the flowers which most distinctly speak of June and midsummer”
(What to Look for in Summer, 1960)
Artist: CF Tunnicliffe writer: EL Grant Watson
“God creates the dinosaurs.
God destroys the dinosaurs.
God creates man.
Man destroys God.
Man creates the dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs eat man.
Woman inherits the earth.”
Jurassic Park (1993)
This wren is only about 4” (100mm) long, yet bathes us in beautiful song.
How much greater and impact we can make… to bring peace and joy to the spaces around us.
Defra Trail Hunting Consultation
🦊 If you do one thing for wildlife today, please do this NOW
Please share this post and encourage your friends, family and colleagues to take part before the consultation closes on 18th June.
Together, we can make a difference for Britain's wildlife.
Have your say here: https://t.co/v1OJdf2zDg
Save Me Trust Link https://t.co/GqZZqhjp91
“When our genes could not store all the information necessary for survival, we slowly invented brains. But then the time came, perhaps ten thousand years ago, when we needed to know more than could conveniently be contained in brains. So we learned to stockpile enormous quantities of information outside our bodies. We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of that memory is called the library.
A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called ‘leaves’) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person - perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”
— Carl Sagan
In a world where bad news just seems to keep coming, here is my Good news antidote. I am not sticking my head in the sand but I am looking for the joy wherever it lives.
This year the Home Office moved to stop expert sheep shearers from Australia and New Zealand coming to shear British sheep.
The people who keep the animals comfortable were declared surplus to requirements.
For over a decade, around 75 of the best shearers on earth have flown in each spring on a simple visa concession. In a few brutal weeks they take the wool off up to two million sheep.
A top shearer clears a ewe in two or three minutes. Hundreds a day. Calm hands, no panic in the animal. It is a global trade and a young body's game, and Britain has never grown enough of its own.
The official line? Fourteen years to train Britons, so the door is closing.
Here is what that tidy sentence ignores. A sheep must be shorn every year or she overheats, cannot move properly, and gets eaten alive by flies and maggots. Shearing on time is welfare, plain and simple, written into law and into the animal's own skin.
So a government that lectures farmers without pause about welfare has quietly made the most basic welfare task harder to carry out. After the outcry they allowed one "final" year. Then the experts are gone for good.
A sector already losing money on every fleece, already burning wool it cannot sell, now told it cannot even get the people in to take the wool off.
You could be forgiven for thinking somebody wants the British sheep gone.
71% of carers say they are already grieving the person they knew while still caring for them.
If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.
When someone close to you develops dementia, both of you may experience a profound sense of loss that can change over time.
Depending on your relationship and circumstances, you may feel you are losing, or have already lost: your relationship with the person; companionship, support and special understanding; a particular lifestyle; intimacy with the person; freedom to work or take part in other activities; communication between you; future plans; and the person themselves.
You may grieve for a short time as you experience these changes, or grief can be ongoing.
Your feelings of grief may also change or go back and forth over time.
Feelings of loss and grief might make it harder for you to cope with caring.
Some of the changes you both go through can be harder to process than the person’s death.
It’s important to acknowledge any feelings you have and try not to feel guilty about them. There is no right or wrong way to grieve.
If you need any support or advice, please call our Dementia Support Line on 033 150 3456 or access peer support via our Dementia Support Forum 👇 https://t.co/NpQ3pS4uWh
[Image description: A graphic titled 'Grieving a person with dementia can feel like you’re losing or have already lost...' depicts a person sat down, holding their knees towards their chest, as if something is troubling them. They are surrounded by short sentences describing the the different types of 'loss', which include: Intimacy with the person; Your relationship with the person; Companionship, support and special understanding; A particular lifestyle; Freedom to work or take part in other activities; Communication between you; Future plans; and The person. An Alzheimer's Society logo can be seen in the bottom left corner.]
It's a little known fact that back in the old days #Orkney horses were masters of disguise and could easily blend into their surroundings.
You might not believe this but there is a horse standing in this photograph.
LIKE if you think you see it.
RT if you DEFINITELY see it.
If you're joining in with the #ReadChristie2026 challenge then the theme for June is the Best @agathachristie story to Read in One Sitting!
The chosen title for this month is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd which is also being celebrated because it was first published 100 YEARS AGO!
20th Century Fox spent millions marketing Fight Club as “Brad Pitt beats people up.”
David Fincher wanted pink soap, fake PSAs, and a campaign that felt as weird, satirical, and anti-consumerist as the movie itself.
However, studio focused on the marketing of the fight scenes.
This was later criticized for making Fight Club seem like a movie about fighting rather than a satire of masculinity, consumerism, and alienation.
It's #HiVis fortnight; an annual campaign to promote library services and technologies that assist people living with visual impairment.
The latest newest addition to our collection of assistive items is this brand new set of #LEGO Braille Bricks, sent from our friends @RNIB❤️
The FBI had boxes full of serial killer confessions they couldn’t actually use.
Hours of interviews.
Detailed admissions.
Direct conversations with some of the most violent men in America.
And none of it was scientifically useful.
Then a 42-year-old psychiatric nurse walked into Quantico and changed criminal investigation forever.
Her name was Ann Burgess.
1975.
FBI agents Robert Ressler and John Douglas had spent months traveling across the country interviewing imprisoned serial killers. They believed understanding offenders could help solve future crimes.
But when Ann Burgess listened to the tapes, she immediately saw the problem.
“This isn’t research,” she told them.
“These are just stories.”
The room went silent.
“You’re asking them to talk about themselves,” she said. “But every interview is different. There’s no structure. No methodology. You can’t compare one offender to another.”
Then she asked a question nobody else in the room had thought to ask:
“Tell me about the women they killed.”
Not the killers.
The victims.
Who were they?
How old were they?
Where were they approached?
What made them vulnerable?
How did the offender gain control?
The agents were confused.
Ann Burgess explained something revolutionary:
“If you truly study the victims, you’ll understand the offender.”
At the time, Burgess was already a groundbreaking trauma researcher. In 1974, she had co-authored one of the first major studies proving rape caused lasting psychological trauma — at a time when courts barely acknowledged it.
She helped create the term “rape trauma syndrome.”
Now she brought that same scientific rigor to the FBI.
She redesigned the interviews.
Created structured questionnaires.
Introduced victimology as the foundation of profiling.
Distinguished between a killer’s “MO” and their “signature.”
Mapped escalation patterns.
Explained that sexual violence was about power and control — not desire.
Suddenly, the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit had something it had never truly possessed before:
Methodology.
And it worked.
In 1983, young boys began disappearing in Nebraska.
Using Burgess’s framework, investigators built a profile:
A young white male.
Slight build.
Someone trusted around children.
Likely connected to scouting or youth activities.
A person who kept souvenirs and detective magazines.
Police arrested John Joubert.
The profile was astonishingly accurate.
Almost overnight, criminal profiling became legitimate law enforcement science.
And yet most of the credit went elsewhere.
The public celebrated the FBI agents.
Books were written.
Movies and television series followed.
Ann Burgess became a footnote.
When Netflix released Mindhunter, they based a character on her — but changed nearly everything.
They made her a psychologist instead of a nurse.
Changed her personal life entirely.
Most viewers never even realized she was based on a real person.
Meanwhile, the real Ann Burgess kept working.
Teaching.
Publishing.
Consulting.
Testifying in court.
Training professionals around the world.
More than 150 academic publications.
Multiple landmark books.
Decades of pioneering work.
And through all of it, one truth remained:
Modern criminal profiling exists in large part because a psychiatric nurse walked into a room full of FBI agents and told them they were asking the wrong questions.
Not:
“Why did the killer do this?”
But:
“Who were the victims?”
That shift changed criminal investigation forever.
Ann Burgess is 88 years old now.
Still teaching.
Still working.
Still brilliant.
And finally receiving recognition not as a side character in someone else’s story —
But as herself.
The woman who taught the FBI how to truly understand predators by first understanding the people they harmed.
i took a 45-minute uber ride home from the airport last night after a brutal, three-day business trip.
i was completely emotionally and physically drained, and my social battery was at absolute zero.
when i got into the car, the driver.. an older guy named kabir.. didn't say the usual "how was your flight?" or turn on the radio.
instead, he just handed me a small, laminated piece of paper attached to the back of his headrest.
it was a literal "ride menu."
it said:
1. *the silent ride* (total quiet, no pressure to talk).
2. *the therapist ride* (if you need to vent about your day, i am listening).
3. *the tourist ride* (i will tell you cool facts about the city).
4. *the radio ride* (we just listen to old jazz and coast).
i smiled, pointed to number 1, and whispered, "silent ride, please. thank you."
he gave me a warm nod in the rearview mirror, adjusted the AC, and drove the entire 45 minutes in absolute, beautiful silence.
it was the most peaceful, therapeutic boundary i’ve experienced all year. i felt my entire nervous system finally reset.
when he dropped me off, i gave him a massive tip and told him, "that menu is a genius business idea. you must get amazing reviews."
He looked back at me and said, "i didn't make the menu to get better tips, dear.
my daughter has severe social anxiety, and she told me that the hardest part of her day is navigating small talk with strangers when her brain is tired.
she told me it feels like running a marathon.
i made the card so that anyone who gets into my car can feel completely safe dropping the mask for a little while."
i walked into my apartment and just sat on my suitcase.
we live in a world that is constantly screaming at us to perform, to network, to be "on," and to over-communicate.
but sometimes, the deepest form of love and respect you can show another human being is just creating a small, safe pocket of silence for them to rest in.
pay attention to the people who give you permission to be quiet. they are rare.
The Somerset Farmhouse of 1 North Street, Williton were approached by a "food influencer" that wanted to charge them £2,000 for a review.
They put out a video of Sally eating a sausage roll instead 😆.
Lets make Sally and the Somerset Farmhouse famous for free.