All the news that's fit ...

[shewhomust]

In normal times - the old normal, which may never be normal again - I barely dip into the news section of the paper, getting my news from the radio, aI can take nd referring to the paper only when I want to know more. These days, though, I can take only so much of the radio news, with its passion for the daily briefing from Downing Street, and I'm spending more time reading the paper, where I can skim or linger as I please. From Saturday's Guardian - the 'news' section alone - I liked:

• a report that the Natural History Museum has acquired the notebooks of George Murray Levick, member of Scott's Antarctic expedition and observer of penguin behaviour, which so shocked him that he used the Greek alphabet to record it: I don't know whose sensibilities he was shielding here. Also his photographs of penguins. I'm always disconcerted by the way the era of photography overlaps with the era of people drawing on a classical education to write down the unspeakable. Also the heroic devotion with which explorers deployed unweildy photographic equipment. The NHM shamelessly reproduces a page of this penguin porn in its version of the story.



• There are other ways of running a travel business: An interview with John and Irene Hays of Hays Travel, who rescued Thomas Cook from administration only to see the entire world go into lockdown. The couple who own the business have put themselves on the national minimum wage:
  

  "We said we’d work for nothing and then our payroll said they’d have to make us redundant in that case, so we changed our minds," said John.

  
  Richard Branson please note.



• Virtual Amsterdam: links to explore ...



• Department of second thoughts: I'm disappointed that the headline which appeared in the dead-tree edition as "I overcame my fear of bears by feeling the Earth beneath my feet" has been revised for the online edition. The article doesn't mention not stepping on the cracks ...