Happy Friday! This weeks links…

1) Why we loved Gilbert Blythe. As played by Jonathan Crombie, who died last week, which is sad because he was only 48, it prompted a re-watch of Anne of Green Gables at the weekend and I still cried like a baby when Matthew died.

2) I chose not to vote. So young, so stupid.

3) Frogs stage a pitch invasion

4) Premier League teams popularity around the world. Interesting. As a side note, I saw more Chelsea shirts in Cote d’Ivoire than I did in Chelsea

5) Everyone loves my dad – they just don’t know he’s an alcoholic. I recognise a lot of this.

I can tell from my dad’s voice alone how much he’s had to drink. He wasn’t yet on a second glass, so had hit a chatty peak: not slurred or over-emotional, but repeatedly saying how much he loves me, how proud he is of me – but failing to ask about my life (it’s easier that way; knowing what we’re up to and realising what he’s lost is, after all, part of what the alcohol anaesthetises)

6) Jack Monroe on the Trussell Trust figures that were released this week. Ma volunteers at the food bank in Kingston and she’d mentioned to me that no one was talking about the report.

Nobody who has received this help would deny that it is a good thing. But it’s a disgrace that food banks are needed in the first place, patching up the holes left by an inefficient and downright barbaric attack on the meagre safety net of what remains of a notion of “social security”.