Olivia Smith

Mincer. Glue gun.

Absolutely obsessed with pets gumtree now, but I’ve got to warn you not to go on it after the pub. You might wake up to find you’ve bought 40-50 budgies and a ‘very loveable’ python.

How is this even a thing?

Nice.

Or as the George Barker character from By Grand Central Station. Or the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper.

I was thinking I might go as Prince Harry from ‘Spare’

Yes, I was going to say, I feel the opposite: what's the point in only learning new ways of behaving (as in good behaviour)?

A letter from Humphrey Gilbert-Carter to Harry Richardson Creswick, 3 May 1927, containing a pressed plant with yellow flowers.

A letter from Humphrey Gilbert-Carter to Harry Richardson Creswick, 3 May 1927, containing a pressed plant, on top of a 15th-century Bible.

The smell of old books. ‘Quite a small piece of Fenugreek would make your Bible smell like a ripe cheese.’

Humphrey Gilbert-Carter, Director of @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social to Harry Creswick @theul.bsky.social, identifying a plant in a 15th-century Bible as Helichrysum stoechas. Inc.1.A.7.2[860]

Great lesson

I'm not sure, it's up his street isn't it. (Hello btw!)

yes, who needs AI?

Would you be interested? Spotted by a friend in London

A copy of The Translations of Seamus Heaney on a wooden surface.

New post!

I take an in-depth look at Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, alongside forays into Victorian translations by William Morris and the brilliantly named Athanasius Diedrich Wackerbarth.

This is based on an undergraduate lecture I gave at Oxford in 2020.

nikolasgunn.co.uk/2026/02/09/o...

I am so happy her beautiful voice has been picked up by something that will reach a lot of people.

Olivia Chaney on Instagram: "“If you had asked me which literary adaptation I would most have wanted my music to feature in, it would always have been Wuthering Heights. It’s my favourite novel. It fe... 170 likes, 14 comments - oliviachaneymusic on February 13, 2026: "“If you had asked me which literary adaptation I would most have wanted my music to feature in, it would always have been Wuthering He...

I haven't seen the new Wuthering Heights film, but the main thing is I'm so excited for my childhood friend, also called Olivia, whose music was used for its keynote song! www.instagram.com/oliviachaney...

Happy Valentine’s ♥️

The common reader will now be glad to forget about these curious spirits as they slink back into the shadows, waiting patiently for the next Valent's Eve.

All Valent's Eve

This knowledge is now mostly lost, but it used to be understood that when you get a Friday 13th directly before Valentine’s day (14th) a number of unusual spirits awake. These are just a few of them:

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘭𝘶𝘨𝘦. The Cluge is a paranormal superconductive flux state that gets activated by especially passionate kissing. As Farah North's 2024 article shows:

𝘔𝘤𝘎𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘺. If McGinty senses an insincere encounter, he will scream at 101 decibels and all the champagne flutes will shatter.

I wonder what will happen, whether it'll reverse and we'll have a summer drought. It doesn't feel like a good weather rhythm.

This looks so nice. We basically live in a swamp here, our houses are mouldy and our bones ache.

Where is this?

𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘖𝘭𝘰𝘯. A French spirit that reenacts a moment of ‘yck’. Yck was a regular emotion of the 7th century used to express a moment of irredeemable disgust, a cognate of the modern ‘ick’ (OED).

𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘨𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘮. If you love someone and a heartgleam appears, it will turn red and glow dimly, emitting a harpsichord sound. Heartgleams are large, approx. 4078 metres high. Professor Izzi Sormoe from the University of Cambridge says ‘Heartgleams are the only spirit we can 100% scientifically prove.’

𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘪𝘴𝘵. Not strictly a spirit, this is a zone that develops around the location you last saw your beloved. Stepping into it will tell you of their true feelings. William of Taunton recorded in 1456: ‘I steppèd vnto that place where she dyd be, and I dyd see that shee dyd not care wonne bit.’

All Valent's Eve

This knowledge is now mostly lost, but it used to be understood that when you get a Friday 13th directly before Valentine’s day (14th) a number of unusual spirits awake. These are just a few of them:

I'm gsohing my way to bedtime #friday

It's like a shitty deathstar ripoff of C-3PO, isn't it.

Certainly! A parody uses familiar material for comic effect. You might like to watch Airplane! (1980), or make your own parody at home. All you'll need is *sellotape *sushi rice *Lester Piggott *20137, the postcode for Porto-Vecchio in Corsica. Let me know if you'd like advice on parody diets.