Binary

Pretty things for Xmas. Craft and expertise. Bright and cheerful. But puzzling: an Xmas gift for who, exactly? Your friend the publican, restaurant owner or service station operator?

Gendered toilets are now a culture war issue. Largely, I think, because it provides a distraction from problems to which politicians have no answer. A way to divide people and make them angry, and so more maleable

When did it become common to revert to using icons, rather than words for public communication? Old road signs used to feature both, but when these were internationalised, most of the words were dropped. The switch from computer interfaces based on words to those based on icons (and using a mouse to navigate them) was pioneered by Apple but rapidly copied by Microsoft, patent law notwithstanding. Has the growth of international travel played a part?

It has long been the case that a trousered figure is not necessarily a man. Increasingly, it is the case that a figure in a skirt or a dress may not be a woman (hey, this is Scotland). But we accept these representations of gender with barely a second thought

There is a cafe here with 2 doors for its toilets. One says "urinals" and one says "cubicles". That's a challenge for iconography

Moving day. We have decamped from our isolated spot on the far west of the island to deeper isolation, further west. Tonight there is no light, no moon, no sound, no neighbours in sight. A feeling of being thrown back thousands of years to a time when the division between night and day was fundamental. A different kind of binary