Hwaet

I want a bicycle with a basket on the front.

When Penguin invited me to make my own selection for this volume it seemed to me that the choice should be as representative as possible of the whole body of my work in the field of the short story. But, as I have written well over one hundred stories in magazines and in the eleven volumes already published, it was quite clear that a very rigid method of selection would have to be imposed. After much casting about I hit on the simple solution of taking one story from each volume and, to simplify the choice further, making it the title story in each case. This presented one small difficulty: my first book did not have a title story but only a general one, Tales from Bective Bridge, so the choice was made at random. The method, of course, had a certain disadvantage in that titles of volumes of short stories are often chosen by the publisher for reasons other than merit but still in their own way valid. Counterbalancing this, however, I saw a very positive advantage: readers would not be presented with a bookful of stories with which they might already be too familiar from their inclusion in innumerable anthologies. I hope, therefore, that this method of selection will in fact be found representative of the work to which I have devoted myself almost exclusively for the past forty years. Mary Lavin February 1981

Mary Lavin had the most gloriously will-this-do approach to choosing the contents for her 1981 Selected Stories.

I've been saying for years that to deal with climate change and biodiversity loss we will need a peopled landscape. Here is an excellent argument for enlightened agriculture over 'rewilding'.

More UK PhD graduates looking overseas for jobs, study finds Proportion of doctoral graduates remaining in UK academia has fallen substantially as more enter industry or move abroad, according to a major longitudinal survey

'Only four in 10 UK PhD graduates remain in academia just over a year after completing their degrees with many more heading overseas for research jobs than in previous years, a major national poll suggests.' 1/3

I’m with you there. I am very torn on this, because I have sat through months-long fraud trials where it was clear that the jury did not have a fucking clue what was going on.
Still- important rights at stake-

BUCKS FIZZ TO DO LIST

Speed it up ✅
Slow it down ✅
Play around ✅
Make mind up ✅

Feeling optimistic about this year’s tomato crop

Recreational reading is not a competitive sport. You're not going to get any "points" for having read the most books in a year. Read for pleasure and read at a pace that gives you pleasure.

Men who shout at hotels are not protecting women Far-right groups protest about asylum accommodation in Aberdeen, claiming to be protecting women, but they regularly target women for abuse

"Seeing an attractive woman on our side, they describe her being gang raped by asylum seekers. After the hotel riots last year, 41% of those arrested had been previously reported for domestic violence. We recognise the anger in the men behind the barriers. We’ve seen it before."

Perhaps Birmingham should stop handing out unconditional offers then.

'You blocked me as you want to live in an echo chamber.'

No, I blocked you as we were in the pub talking about old TV and computers and you walked in shouting at the top of your voice about some orange cunt 3000 miles away.

Amanda Foreman addresses the camera in her BBC documentary ‘The Ascent of Woman’. A subtitle shows that she is describing a ritual of some kind, saying “And then in the afternoon, the women shouted obscenities”

…and probably with good reason, on International Women’s Day or indeed any other

Perhaps I’d like to be left to scream into the void in peace.

Excuse me?

Today, on International Woman’s Day, can all the Reform voting women have a fucking word with themselves please?

The octopus and the handmaid: Reform’s Epsteinian cultural agenda From Epstein’s web to Reform’s proposed raft of policy ideas, creeping misogyny now risks redefining women’s rights in Britain

westenglandbylines.co.uk/politics/hum...

"Reform policy creators are re-positioning society in ways that orientate male thinking towards a future ofj increased sexual abuse"

Claire Jones writes for West England Bylines to commemorate International Womens Day -

*files away Ladybird Libertarians for future usage*

Fact. The screwdriver that tightens the arms of spectacles is only available inside Christmas crackers. Opticians have to pull dozens of crackers to get the tools of their trade, and if you look out the back at Specsavers, you’ll find bins full of wire puzzles, hair bobbles and fortune telling fish.

BRING BACK THE DANELAW

And none of this listening on 1.5x speed, either

Oh, absolutely. It is cheating otherwise.

I like an audiobook from time to time

SCATTERING half a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes over a cut grapefruit half and leaving it overnight in the fridge will make the grapefruit taste of chilli. So don't do it. Robert Canning e-mail

Aw poor Geoffrey

#TopOfTheThrops

This is getting very nasty

#TopOfTheThrops

He’s only flesh and blood

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Let the lad get his end away

#TopOfTheThrops

Making it tough for the cold reader then. Good.

#TopOfTheThrops