Katharine Thomson

Traditional singer and aging hippie.

[‏ً @justjargons]

I just heard someone in this coffee shop talking to their friend, “these folks are using their food stamps to buy junk food”. I said “excuse me for being nosey, but billionaires are using their money to buy kıds.”

My latte tastes better now

[Dfw_camo @dontplay_z]

I think the reason y'all believe Women lie about Rape is because y'all have had UNCLEAR sexual situations and don't want to be labelled a Rapist. Like when you waited until that girl was piss drunk to take her home or When that Girl who said no 20 times finally sad YES.

[The National @ScotNational]

The SNP have hit out at the BBC ahead of a Question Time show which is due to debate Scottish oil and gas without any Scottish representation on the panel

SNP MSP Laura Mitchell said the BBC line-up was the 'perfect representation of the story of Scotland’s energy – zero Scottish say over our own resources'

[Dr Julia Grace Patterson💙 @JujuliaGrace]

I’m so fed up of reading articles where people demand that the NHS starts preparing for winter.

It’s the end of October. Politicians should have started preparing in March 🚨

[Marco Haggiscio @mark1mph]

Hang on a minute ………. If there’s Five refineries in England, why would any oil coming from Rosebank be sent to Belgium for refining …….. something stinks here and it involves closure of Grangemouth and UK GOV and Jim Ratcliffe. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[Joey Swoll @TheJoeySwoll]

No, our parents raised us better than that. 👊🏼

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

In 1979 Britain's most beautiful butterfly went extinct because the country had killed its rabbits and taken its sheep off the hills, and the scientist who worked out why had to put a flock back to bring the insect home.

The large blue is a thing of chalk and limestone downs, and it has the strangest life of any animal in these islands. The caterpillar feeds on wild thyme for a few weeks, then drops to the ground and does an impression of an ant grub so convincing that a red ant carries it underground, where it spends ten months eating the ant's own young. Only one species of ant will do it, and that ant only lives in turf cropped so short the sun can warm the soil to the depth of its nest. Short turf means grazing. For a thousand years the grazing was sheep, and from the eighteenth century it was rabbits as well, millions of them, mowing the downs to a lawn.

In 1953 myxomatosis arrived and killed ninety-nine rabbits in a hundred. Hill sheep were already coming off the downs as the farms went to the plough or to subsidy. Within a few years the turf grew long and cool, the ant died out of it, the caterpillar was carried underground by the wrong ant and eaten, and the butterfly dwindled through the sixties and seventies while everyone blamed collectors. The last British colony, in Devon, died in 1979.

Jeremy Thomas spent the decade on his knees in the grass before he understood it. The whole chain ran back to a mouth cropping a hillside. In 1983 the butterfly was reintroduced from Sweden onto a Somerset slope where the first thing the project did was put the cattle and sheep back on, hard, and the ants returned, and the large blue came after them. It is now on thirty sites, every one of them grazed on purpose.

A butterfly the colour of the summer sky disappeared from England for want of a sheep, and the people who saved it did not plant a flower or build a fence. They hired a grazier.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

At a family dinner over the weekend, my 23-year-old nephew was talking about how hard it is to buy a starter home.

My 58-year-old uncle jumped in: “Just stop ordering takeout, work overtime, and save your money like we did. I bought my first three-bedroom place when I was 25!”

My nephew didn't argue. He just pulled out his phone, opened a basic calculator, and laid it on the table:

“Uncle Mark, in 1993, you bought that house for 82k while earning 36k a year.
That purchase was 2.3 times your annual income.

Today, that exact house is assessed at 490k, while the starting salary for that exact same entry job is 52k. That’s 9.4 times annual income.”

My uncle looked at the numbers, took a slow drink of water, and changed the subject to the weather.

Grit matters. Hard work matters. But acting like the math hasn’t fundamentally shifted is just ignoring reality.

[bunnie @CuriousBunnie12]

you’ve never actually had to care for an infant have you

[he who was here has gone @hewhowashereha1]

For those who voted NO in 2014 because you believed oil was running out, listen to this. Do you feel you were lied to? This is why England won’t allow Scottish independence and you bought the lies with your vote. It’s on your head, fucking morons.

[Laird of the Extremists. #ScottishIndependence @Lairdysnr]

Something needs done about this.

[The National @ScotNational]

NEW: The BBC has been accused of showing it 'doesn’t give a toss about Scotland' after incorrectly plotting Aberdeen on a map during coverage of the Jackdaw gas field

🗣️ 'It’s hard to imagine London being dumped in the middle of Cornwall'

[Deb @DontCallMeDebby]

🙄

[Johnny @JohnnyDundee]

"We waited all summer for rain, didn't we?" declares UK BBC News weather presenter. No 'we' didn't. England did.
Classic casual BBC 'England = the UK'

[Sir Norman of Nowhere. 🏴‍☠️ @Normanjam67]

You know your society is fucked when a parking space can earn more per hour than the minimum wage.

[Lucy McGhee @Luluphooey69]

Endless streams of English MPs and English commentators, talking about Scotlands resources. The very same ppl who’ve been relentlessly telling us that Scotland is too poor to be independent, for years.

[Ko Fella Fulla Beers Ahau🇳🇿🇺🇦🇬🇪🇵🇸🐸🐬🍉 @teesider61]

Well this about sums it up

[Wiseman @certifiedhabib]

そこには、小さなノートが何冊も並んでいた。

夫は一冊を手に取った。

「これ、何？」

「家のことを書いてるノート」

中には、日用品を買い替えた日、息子の服のサイズ、学校に提出する書類の期限、病院の予約、家電の保証期間まで書かれていた。

「洗剤はあと何日くらいでなくなるか、トイレットペーパーはいつ買うか、息子の靴はそろそろ小さくなるかもしれないとか。全部覚えていられないからね」

夫はページをめくり続けた。

「こんなことまで書いてたんだ……」

「書かないと忘れちゃうから」

「でも、別に毎日そんなこと考えなくてもよくない？」

私は少しだけ考えてから答えた。

「考えないで済むように、先に考えてるんだよ」

夫は顔を上げた。

私は続けた。

「トイレットペーパーがなくなってから買いに行くと困るでしょ。息子の学校の書類だって、締め切りの日に気づいたら間に合わない。明日の朝、体操服がないってなったら、誰かが困るから」

「……うん」

「何かが起きてから対応するんじゃなくて、何も起きないように考えてるの」

夫はしばらく黙っていた。

それから、ノートを閉じて言った。

「俺、家事って、目の前のことをやれば終わりだと思ってた」

私はうなずいた。

「やってくれたことには感謝してるよ。でも、家族が困らないように考えることも、家事の一部なんだよ」

夫は小さく息を吐いた。

「ごめん。毎日同じことをしてるだけだと思ってた」

「うん」

「俺、今週だけでも何回も忘れたよね。なのに、君は毎日仕事しながらやってたんだ」

その言葉を聞いて、私は初めて少しだけ泣きそうになった。

翌週から、夫はスマホに家族の予定を入れるようになった。

息子の学校行事も、自分から確認するようになった。

洗剤が残り少なくなると、買い物リストに追加する。

最初は何度も私に聞いてきた。

「これって、いつまでに必要？」

「この書類、どこに出すんだっけ？」

そのたびに、私は教えた。

ある夜、夫がノートを開きながら言った。

「これ、来月から俺も一緒に管理していい？」

「もちろん」

夫は少し笑って、

「今まで、君がやってくれてたから、俺は何も考えずに暮らせてたんだな」

と言った。

私は「そうかもね」と答えた。

その週末、息子が学校から帰ってきて、夫に言った。

「パパ、明日は図工で使うもの、もう準備できてる？」

夫はすぐに答えた。

「うん。昨日のうちに一緒に用意したよ」

息子は安心したように笑った。

その様子を見て、私はふと思った。

家事が半分になったわけじゃない。

やることが急に減ったわけでもない。

ただ、今まで私だけが見ていたものを、夫も見るようになった。

その夜、夫はノートの最後のページに新しい項目を書き足した。

「家族が困る前に気づくこと」

そして、その横に小さく書いた。

「これも、家事。」

私はその文字を見て、何も言わずにノートを閉じた。

今度は、二人で管理するノートになっていた。