My husband's from Belfast and his mum still talks about a dad in their little community taking bolt cutters down to the park to break through the chains because his kids couldn't play on Sundays. This would be the late 1970s and, yes, the people who chained up the gates took it very seriously.

One of the few things I miss about Twitter is if you saw a terrific performance you could help to advertise it because so many people were on there. We haven’t really got there with Bluesky, but if anyone fancies seeing some really good opera, Il Trittico at Welsh National Opera is brilliant!

I was just at my kid’s Y11 parents’ evening and some of the teachers had long queues and others had nobody waiting. ‘Why is that?’ I asked. My daughter scanned the hall and pointed out that only the kids/parents from the two top sets had turned up. Which is heartbreaking.

Disney plus has a surprising amount of good stuff on it. Definitely work the outlay. And The Owl House is great (my youngest is obsessed so I’m now watching it as well).

A lot of seemingly pro-Jewish public pronouncements now sound as unhinged as the anti-semitism they claim to reject. The 'idea of Jews' seems to be floating miles from the grasp of any actual Jews, like some wholly untethered hot air balloon filled with every unsafe vapour one can imagine.

I think it’s sold out apart from the cheap Monday tickets which go on sale at 9. Kind of hoping they might film it, or tour it…

Interesting article by David Baddiel on Mark Rosenblatt’s new play Giant at the Royal Court. Currently not paywalled. www.thetimes.com/culture/thea...

Roald Dahl was a witty, charming genius — and a monster

David Baddiel watches a new play that finally confronts the beloved author’s antisemitism — and asks why it took us so long

I’m fascinated by the diversity of male teenage experience amongst my girls’ schoolfriends. Some boys loudly enamoured of Tate and Farage; other boys lost and vulnerable and looking for any path through adolescence; and yet more boys who are sweet, clever, kind, sensitive, quirky and passionate.

I rarely steal from other bits of the internet… But every night at dinner I regale the kids with facts about cats, refraction, gay history, Stonehenge, commas, Brythonic languages, muscle development… And every night they ask me: “don’t you ever do any work??”

My kids are at a Welsh-language comprehensive and they have both studied rhetoric & practiced oracy. There’s a debate club; all through school they’re encouraged to give speeches in English & Welsh; & youngest spent large part of Y8 English studying the history of rhetoric. This stuff is happening…