Holly Gramazio

Back in Adelaide and it has RAINED and nobody knows what to do, last night at 9pm teenagers were sliding along the slippy wet paving stones on Rundle Mall like they were on heelys while adults admired from the sheltered verandahs along the sides, muttering “yeah that’s pretty cool”

A library with big glass doors opening onto a wide dark-tiled balcony with vines growing all over the outer edge

I’m in Launceston and the library has a big leafy balcony I’m just allowed to sit in and read??? This is so nice!

Aaaa amazing

A printed A4 sheet portraying a line drawing of Mr Pancake, who is a stack of pancakes with little arms and legs and a big smile like he is trying a little too hard to make sure you like him but it’s kind-of endearing, also his hat is a pat of butter

If you’re a kid in this diner you get to colour in Mr Pancake, who seems honestly kind-of boring to colour in (mostly one big shape, hard to justify a colour other than yellow or brown) but also, what a guy! It’s Mr Pancake!

Yeah daytime stuff definitely; sometimes evening things are more varied, sometimes not. Hmmm. Do any festivals sell, I dunno, steam codes on postcards that you can get the game maker to sign?

One of the things I think is interesting and hard about this is that non-practitioners are interested in individual writers in a way they largely aren’t in individual game makers - the writers festival model depends on quite casual readers knowing specific writers they’re interested in

Very good of dogs to hang out in parks pretty happily when there are like 400 people crowding around and maybe 3 other dogs. If I was in a park with 400 dogs and 3 other people I would not be so laid back about it

!!! is THAT what a cantaloupe is!

Thank you I hate this

“Here is another place where Jack the Ripper did not murder any women” would I guess be a quite refreshing tour in its way

Google maps screenshot of a bit of Melbourne with, somehow, a Jack the Ripper walking tour advertised

I’m sorry, but no thank you! I am just about used to the idea that you can’t go anywhere in East London without dodging a drama student in a cape half-arsedly leading a Jack the Ripper walking tour, but I am literally in Melbourne! what!! is going on!!!!

This is great on not just Freeplay but noncommercial game festivals more widely and the state of how things are going (bad)

Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums claiming to be “the GLAM sector” is embarrassing! We should not pretend to be glamorous! If we must have an acronym we should call ourselves eg MALG and retain our dignity!

honestly if you're based in Australia the quality probably won't be as striking, London excels at many things but apple juice is for some reason not one of them. But the apple juice I just enjoyed very much was from Faraday Cage in Fitzroy!

rose 4 was exceptional, I could smell it from three or four metres away, gonna be hard to top that one

it is 9:09am and so far today I have:
- smelled 4 roses
- watched people make croissants in a giant glass cube
- drunk the best apple juice I've had in a decade
- seen a man in a suit cycle down a cycle lane with two perfect dogs loping behind him
The jetlag + Melbourne combo is pretty great

today in a second-hand bookshop I saw a John Wyndham book that I had never heard of, which (1) I had no idea there were any John Wyndham books I hadn't read, (2) the book was called Jizzle

Look I didn’t see any but who’s to say what was behind the plastic flowers, tennis balls and remote control holders

Hand painted shop sign: HOME MADE CAKES, CAFFÈ E PASTICCERIA with lots of graffiti

Sign: SUPER $2 SHOP HOT POTATOES

hello I’m in Melbourne! Was gonna post a picture to prove it but in my five waking hours here so far it seems I have exclusively taken photos of lightly decaying shop signs

cut-down piece of a list of books, very messy, mix of type and scribble, headed "BOOKS THAT ARE 150 PAGES OR LESS"

Little newsletter on short books and choosing what to read buttondown.com/holly/archiv...

I can't stop playing KOLYDR A new classic from the master craftsman of browser games.

good post on @adamatomic.bsky.social's KOLYDR, which I too cannot stop playing www.jank.cool/i-cant-stop-...

this never happened when I worked in games

Once again went to a book launch where the person at the door said "oh I signed you in already" when she definitely hadn't. Haven't yet figured out whether I have a specific doppelganger who's always more on time, or whether it's just that most women at book launches look approximately like me

I am on the train sitting next to a woman who is READING a BROADSHEET NEWSPAPER and
(a) yes incredible, love it
(b) the logistics of how loads of people used to do this is all the time is extremely impressive to me, like did we have to sync our page turns to the person sitting on each side or what

like a BUNCH of people I have a little piece in this! I've been poking through the proof copy and ahh there's so much good stuff in it

A pile of 20ish books by writers from Australia

this is my "Australian books I own but have not read" pile; once again if there's anything in here you think I should definitely prioritise or definitely not bother with then please, advise me

A scrappily-drawn calendar showing FEB, with annotations: "This month I'm only reading books from ONE COUNTRY"

Still doing the Books Peckham reading calendar! February is "books from one country" and: look, Australia definitely feels like a bit of a copout but also I'm going to literally be there for most of the month, and it would be a bit weird to go to Australia just to read a load of books from eg Chile

Yeah they changed the rules to make it harder, didn’t they. Spoilsports tbh

Speaking as an Australian (we have a federal election every 3 years and leadership spills on sitting prime ministers are a beloved tradition), I think: it is very funny that the UK has had as many twenty-first century prime ministers as us, and if you can make it to 8 before we do then good on ya

Maybe! I thought middle age was meant to be classic affair age though!