Well this sounds ace! (I'm juggling a wiggly nearly five-month-old otherwise the hat would be thrown in 👒)

Had an ace time at Derbyshire Makes Festival. Told a Rochdale tale & a new story about teeth 🦷 Seek out the other amazing storytellers: Gordon MacLellan (aka Creeping Toad), Joe Winstanley (Studio Skai), Michelle Collier (@mickeypip.bsky.social), & Gillian Shimwell. #DerbyshireMakes #Glossop

Prop making for Storytelling Takeover; I'm host with four other amazing artists: 9th May, Glossop. I'll be telling a brand new story interweaving true life storytelling & fairytale. Loads on during the day too www.derbyshiremakes.co.uk/whats-on/glo... #derbyshiremakes #highpeakcommunityarts 🦷

I'm host with the most at the Derbyshire Makes Festival, 9 May in the Partington Theatre #Glossop. Featuring loads of talented historians, storytellers, & creative practitioners. I'll be sharing a stories too www.derbyshiremakes.co.uk/whats-on/glo... #storytelling #folklore #placewriting #fairytales

Closes today! A brilliant opportunity :-) for mid-PhDs/ECRs

Evening daffodils. St David's & first day of meteorological spring. (I normally count it from the vernal equinox but we need hope, right?) Baby has a cold & I looked at the little one & I thought of the school that has been bombed. & despairing at the cruelty of it all, I think of daffodils again.

The world seems difficult at the moment and I'm never sure what to post on this social network. Here's to beautiful birds of prey and potential joyful subversion at major sporting events. Viva el búho! #superbowl

I'm still collecting children's folklore for my next podcast theme, and I'm getting some amazing responses - monsters, urban legends, games, even a Tin God! Still time to add yours to this Google Form: forms.gle/D8mLW7q2um5Z...

Have you completed a PhD in the last 10 years? Applications are open for our Postdoctoral Visiting Fellowship in Sustainability and Environment. Funding covers an £8000 bursary for part-time (0.5) research over 8 months, plus travel expenses. Apply by Monday 9 February. link.bl.uk/VisitingFellowship

Gordon Forster Essay Prize 2026 Deadline: 1 May 2026 Open to postgraduate students and ECRs, the winner receives £200 and their essay will be considered for publication. Essays should fit within the journal’s aims & scope, and be between 7000-10000 words (inc. footnotes). Please repost.

It's too late... 🌿

PhD ponderings from from ten years ago (how is it a decade ago?! How?!!!!!). This absolute lad standing on a mind map about maps. Insert meta paw here. #placewriting #maps

Read this book to the baby last night and oh my word do I have feelings about it. app.thestorygraph.com/books/182986...

I hope to make this year another year filled with books. And new adventures of sharing the love of reading with a little one! 2025 graphic created from my @thestorygraph.com account. Some books not included on here are the Oldham poetry books but it's nearly everything! #NationalYearOfReading2026

The annual thinning of the veil and this year's "I probably should have done GCSE art" offering: Derpkin the Pumpkin lit up by camping torch!

This week is #BannedBooksWeekUK. Join @indexoncensorship.org to celebrate the books that have been challenged, removed or silenced, and to stand with the people who write, sell and lend them. Celebrate the freedom to read.

#librarysky #librariansky #skybrarian (signal boost as am on leave so will live vicariously through you all 📚)

Hello world! We're the History of Libraries Research Seminar, University of London account. Sponsored by the Institute of English Studies, Institute of Historical Research, Warburg Institute, and CILIP Library & Information History Group.

'The arts are essential to a rounded education; they are social not solitary'.

Ugh, that guy... He'd be pissed off to know that his institution funded my so-called "hobbyist"* PhD. Deeply worrying rhetoric from UUK. * No such thing, btw. This is inflammatory bobbins set to ignite the STEM Vs Humanities bros...

🎉📣 Announcing the IHR Research Training Courses for October - December 2025. Visit the IHR website to register and find detailed information on each course: www.history.ac.uk/study-traini...

I was contacted by Emily, a Masters student from Oxford, who is conducting a research project examining how publishing is responding to the current growing interest in folklore. PUBLISHERS - take note! If you can help by completing her short survey, please visit docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Dropping this into the Bluesky void. Had an upsetting & incredibly vivid dream last night about a crocodile eating an otter in the river. (River Calder not the Nile.) Just now I've learned that it's #worldotterday. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, SUBCONSCIOUS?!!!! 🐊

Dementia Action week in the library. Our library team & knitting and crochet club have been busy in my absence! 💙 #oldham

And this sounds ace but alas I cannot go (it's show tech week). If you're going I shall live vicariously through you!

Bee bum in the Rosa rugosa 'Roseraie de l'Haÿ'! Happy #worldbeeday (Am bit burned out after caning it / "girlbossing too close to the sun" last week, have a chunk of this week booked off work & feel like I'm crawling towards it - not unlike a bumblebee crawling into a blousy bloom for pollen...) 🐝🐝🐝

Yes, this!!

(ad)venturing to the #lithicgathering @manmetuni.bsky.social Bringing a pocketful of Rochdale stones to the symposium party. Excited but nervous! #placewriting

If you're in HE 'tis the season where transitions and endings occur as we hurtle towards the end of summer term. Been in for just over an hour and we've had: a victory hug (a well deserved 2:1), a huge bag of books returned, and chocolates. #librarysky

There are a heap of "citation needed"s about these claims... #eurovision

I...um.. i have to admit that I really like that; it's sort of three or four music styles in one... #Croatia #Eurovision

God, I love Ziferblat, it's like a 3 minute intro to some serious prog rock. His voice is gorgeous too. People who can vote send one from me #eurovision

And with a shriek, the swifts are back in Todmorden! (Pictured: a bird that stops for long enough to get a picture of. Thank you, pigeon.)

Rochdale's Seven Sisters from Rooley Moor Road / Catley Lane / The Cotton Famine Road. Loads of sky larks making their raspy high-pitched multi-noted presence known. #Rochdale

Call for papers & performances from @brihughespoet.bsky.social & Rebecca Drake - #Hydropoetry in Practice #seminar - deadline 23rd May - with @abipalmer.bsky.social & Suzannah V Evans as keynote speakers - supported by HARI. Online & in-person attendance & participation #AcademicSky #BlueHumanities

Can you help FT pal Urszula Wolski with her research? If you are a paranormal investigator past or present please take part by scanning the QR code, or if you prefer click on: forms.gle/C9rruSM6iesJ...

Good thing I don't need a #nhs doctor mega urgently... #todmorden 🫠

Curse of a sunny day/hurtling towards the end of the academic year. Prepped a creative writing session &, alas, no students have appeared. Shame, as I have sweets! Anyone else having similar attendance issues even though you've planned a session that YOU'D love to do?! #academicsky #HEsky

Marmite and Staffordshire oatcakes (you know, the floppy ones). And scones of course.

Colleague wanted to open the till - we've been doing a lot of printing & laminating in the library today - and asked me if I had the key. "Yes", I replied, "I've got the key AND the secret". Silence. I am officially old ☠️ #librarylife

V short blog - with bonus short cringe video of me being filled with joy - on Healey stones. Enjoy/endure! writingrochdale.wordpress.com/2025/04/22/t... #placemaking #rochdale #stonecircle Image: Healey stone circle from a north east vantage point. It was a nicer day than the grey sky suggests.

Beautiful day for a wander and to find more stones. You'll have to imagine the skylark surround sound though #Rochdale #Littleborough

Signal boost 🩵🩷🤍

In light of this news, I regret not making clear in my #lilac25 talk on my PhD research on women's information experiences that my research approach includes trans women, and nonbinary folks who have girl/woman as part of their identity. My feminism has no space for those who gatekeep womanhood.

Happy to share that I'll be presenting a creative/critical paper at this! "The Stones of Rochdale" :-) This is Healey Stone Circle, a 21st century creation perhaps signalling a (re)turn to neolithic spiritual or calendrical practice? Or just a lovely, ludic gesture? #rochdale

2025 Manchester Writing School Summer Festival - now available to book. Bursary places available. @dcahf-met.bsky.social @kimmoorepoet.bsky.social mmu.estore.flywire.com/products/202...

Spring library display on International Children's Book Day #librarylife

Call for Papers: Lying in Legend and Tradition: The Nineteenth Legendary Weekend of The Folklore Society will be held on Saturday 6th - Sunday 7th September 2025 at Tullie House, Carlisle. Submission deadline: 1st July 2025. folklore-society.com/event/lying-...

Goodbye NaNoWriMo, the embrace of GenAI & taking an age to sort out fora issues wasn't brilliant. Still, I will always be grateful for it existing while I was grieving. Drafting a daft comic fantasy - which will likely never leave the laptop - kept me from falling into a deeper pit of depression.

I've always found Mother's Day a bit weird. (And, being a nerd here, it was about churches originally rather than the Hallmark-esque 💸 frenzy it has become.) BUT I'm so lucky to still have Mum who just popped over with a huge vegan lemon cake that would feed about twenty. Grateful, but also: 🌸🌻