Some books are so well done you wish you'd written them yourself. Next best thing is blurbing them!
This is a very smart and thoughtful book, readable and interesting for a scholar who isn't already waist deep in the sources.
Ah fantastic, Peter is an old friend of mine from undergrad at Bristol! I’m hoping to make it to the book launch event in April, very much looking forward to reading this…
Another creative four-paw stack from Orangina, a small tortie cat - mainly black, with splashes of orange - snoozing curled up on a light blue blanket. I think the paw stack sequence is: back-right, front-right, back-left, front-left. The tail is somewhere in amongst it all.
(I know the world is on fire and everything is awful, but it is still possible — and even essential — to find joy in the little things, y pethau bychain)
Photo of a whole stack of yellow daffodils with bright green long thin leaves, sat amongst green grass with a thin white yellow fence running just behind (it’s technically an electric fence, but pretty sure I saw a sign sitting on the floor that used to be attached to said fence saying NOT LIVE, so it’s just a kind of pointless fence now. Anyway…) Pretty sure there were at least three different types of daffodils in this cluster that sits on the route of one of my usual local walks near Menai Bridge. Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus Everyone!
Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus Pawb!
Happy St David’s Day everyone!
Yes that arrived safely this morning, thank you! Another excellent print, already looking forward to the March edition :)
Slightly angled view of a grey textured cliff face taking up half the image, with some dark green gorse bushes at the bottom left corner. Top left diagonal half of the image has blue sky, white clouds, and a small amount of blue-grey sea. The very tip of the Great Orme off Llandudno is visible, peeking out from behind the cliff face.
The cliff face in question, the headland between Penmaenmawr and Dwygyfylchi…this section was more traversing than descending, but was still a slightly tricky scramble. Picked my line well though, if I do say so myself…
*goes on a micro hike on wet ground, scrambling down a slippery cliff face I’ve not done before*
Easy! No problems at all…
*walks around my parents garden for five minutes*
Stacks it on the stone steps, smashing my arm into a nice lump of granite.
FFS, can I just be consistently clumsy maybe??
But seriously, rubbing fluffy paws on your face (if that is something that your cat will tolerate) is the best thing I have found to stop the screams. Instant stress relief, serious soft sensory stimulation as solution to all life’s bullshit…
Screenshot of part of a WhatsApp chat. Top pic is of Orangina, my cute little tortie cat, curled up on my bed with my hand on my belly. Messages read: Sorry, bit stressful! I’ve tried to calm down by giving a cozy snoozy cat some belly rubs 😸 *rubbing fluffy paws on my face to try and stop the screams* (Quote post above) New album title 😹
My sister was getting the majority of my rage in some WhatsApps earlier, leading to this exchange:
So the back pain has mostly gone, but my nemesis — Aaron from DPD — has yet again failed to deliver my parcel and lied about it.
And the DPD complaints form won’t send. So looks like I’ll be writing a letter to customer services…
I swear if I ever see that prick I’m gonna [heavily redacted] him.
So far I have had 1xparacetamol, 2xcocodamol, 2 lots of ibuprofen gel, 10 minutes on the spiky acumat and 2xibuprofen, and we have made some progress with the pain. I haven’t screamed OR a collapsed in at least half an hour.
But I still don’t have my parcel…
Orangina couldn’t understand why I kept collapsing and screaming this morning, when I should have been giving her pre-breakfast playtime…
Ah FFS, woke up with the worst back pain I’ve had in years, on a day where my nemesis — Aaron from DPD — has yet again “delivered” my parcel to some random secret location which is not my house.
This is not a good combination! I need my cocodamol to kick in already!! Or if it has, I need more!!!
We're looking for ONE MORE paper for Medieval Temporalities and Comics! If you or anyone you know studies comics and the medieval, consider submitting an abstract 😀
I’m sure they’ll all be excellent! For someone quite cat-obsessed, I don’t have a lot of cat art on my walls, so this subscription should go a long way to rectifying that :)
Just charging up my old iPod so I can listen to the whole RATM at full volume album later…
(And I’ll do my usual monthly check to make sure I can still play the entire Bombtrack bassline from memory, first learnt 20+ years ago!)
A print by @tokyosexwhale.bsky.social of the head of a black cat drawn from below, with a yellow background, yellow eyes, and an excellent big pink tongue sticking out — an outstanding image of a blep. The A5 print is accompanied by three small stickers of two small cats called Aggie and Bean aka “the bean machine” who I must assume are the artist’s own feline friends. They have a lot of white fur with some orange and black/grey in the mix, both with pink noses and very cute. The whole lot, as usual, is presented on a dirty cat-scratched turquoise yoga mat, my signature background for any and all images I take photos of. Look, if I put the yoga mat away then I can never be arsed to unroll it again to do my stretches; if I leave it out the cat scratches it. So my yoga mat stays flat, dirty and cat-scratched. I don’t know how you do it in your house, this is just how things work round here.
My Blep print from @tokyosexwhale.bsky.social arrived today and I am fucking delighted!
Look at this! Isn’t it great?! I’m already very pleased with my decision to sign up for the Snail Meow Print Club this year. I’ll be getting a print every month and I can’t wait to see the rest.
#CatArt #blep
Ah no I see you are already familiar with this text!
Calling @oldenoughtosay.com, this seems like important information you may wish to familiarise yourself with…
Ok WTF is going on today, I haven’t had any spam calls in weeks/months, but I’ve had four already from four different numbers…why?? Why the coordinated attack on my mobile this particular Tuesday?!?
Photo from above of three brown boxes filled with silver cans of kombucha, sitting on a black and white patterned rug. There is a wooden chest of drawers and an overfilled shoe rack in the background. Not pictured: the nice man from the nearby bookshop who found these boxes dumped outside the garage weeks ago and brought them round to me today after finally tracking down my location :)
Okay I’m starting to think this year might turn out okay. My missing kombucha crates (one lot anyway – don’t ask…) has been found by a lovely local man and brought to my door!
So I now have plenty of fruity CBD kombucha to get me through the final phase of the PhD. Fuck yeah, let’s go 2026 🤘
For a first attempt at homemade kimchi, I’m pretty pleased. I’ll probably increase the garlic and gojugang and reduce the ginger in the next batch, but just to balance the flavours better. It’s hot, but can definitely be made hotter without hitting painful levels of heat…
Well I reckon we can call this a success! Grabbed a few spoonfuls last night with dinner, and no ill effects today :)
It certainly is tasty, very ginger-heavy because I had loads to use up, and has a sort of…fizziness on the tongue?? I think that’s the “tang” from the fermentation. I think!
Picture of a glass jar filled with orangey yellow homemade kimchi, held by a white hand, with green plants visible in the background outside the window
It’s a new year, and time for a new game of “Will I Give Myself Food Poisoning: Homemade Kimchi Edition!”
After the success of last autumn’s edible mushroom foraging, decided to find some new and exciting ways to (possibly) destroy my gastrointestinal system. It smells incredible, but I’m scared 😹
And we’re done. I hope…I had to send the thesis PDF as a google drive link coz it was too big to email direct, but it should be fine….??
I’m off for a windy walk, hopefully at some point my left eye will stop twitching and I can recover from this frantic final fortnight of thesis-writing!
Oh thank fuck. I have permission to hand in my thesis on Thursday instead of the actual deadline, today.
This extra day or two is going to make all the difference. Fingers crossed this storm doesn’t knock out the power though else I’m proper screwed!!
“Hufentually” 😺 ardderchog!
Barely leaving the house for a fortnight, mainlining Lion’s Mane Mushroom supplements with no days off and spending 7hrs a day on my computer is, unsurprisingly, not doing my body any favours!
