Ronaldo sent off, gurning petulantly. The game’s gone

It feels really, really good to finally hold the hard copy of this in my hands! Years of work in one shiny new book 😊 www.bloomsbury.com/uk/language-...

On my way to this later on today. Ready to fire up the StylisticsMobile for a dip into sociolinguistics - and away!

I know very little about chaos magick but it’s always good to have new readers, and people can use my books however they like

Spooky moon, waiting for the bonfire

‘To safeplace’

Sad to be missing out? Why not join us in December for ‘New Approaches to Teaching A level Lang/Lit’? Bookings now open! www.englishandmedia.co.uk/courses/2f9b...

A Bonfire Demon (2 gin, 1 crème de cassis, half Kings Ginger, half a lime juice) - and of course a November barbecue!

📣 Appel à contributions - Varia [Call for paper - Regular Issue] Travaux en linguistique cognitive-fonctionelle [Papers in cognitive-functional linguistics] Articles en 🇫🇷 ou 🇬🇧, max. 10 000 mots. 📅 Deadline : 31 jan. 2026 📧 [email protected] 🔗 journals.openedition.org/cognitextes

Go light the lantern at your door and honour those who've gone before. The worlds that part us now are twain for Hallow's Eve is here again. youtu.be/EPXFAcAH7Cs?...

Diversion

Setting off now! If you’re anywhere near Canterbury, make a pilgrimage to this:-

This week’s Literary Linguistics seminar on metaphor features this seasonal absolute paranoid cracker by Hugh Sykes Davies (1936)

Stylistics 3.0 has arrived! 🎉 Delighted to be a small cog in the wheel of Section D. More details here: www.routledge.com/Stylistics-A-Resource-Book-for-Students/Simpson/p/book/9781032217536 ⚠️ Warning: May contain updated exercises feat. Rihanna and Nicki Minaj 🎶

Change all the clocks, update the telephone, the laptop, the old laptop, tablet, kindle, my watch, the other watch, the hiking watch, fridge, coffee machine, oven, radio, CD player, the actual clock, the other clock, the car, three alarm clocks. Took about an hour

Slab of Yorkshire parkin done for next weekend. If only you could smell this

Storage / abandoned moonbase

My linguistic life: chatting today about familects and your words for the ‘remote control’ on BBC Radio Nottingham with Laurie Dyche. Good fun!

But who speaks for the dead? I've got another newsletter out, and I think this is quite a thought-provoking one simple.ghost.io/but-who-spea...

School meeting receives the annual 30-page Health & Safety report. Page 18 details any ‘incidents and accidents’, and I note there were also no hints and allegations, but no one gets the ‘pop’ cultural reference. I am old, and you can call me Al

Please join me on 12th November at my @universityofleeds.bsky.social professorial inaugural lecture on ‘Language Diversity and Social (In)justice’. More info here, including a link at the bottom to book a ticket (which is free but we need to track numbers): ahc.leeds.ac.uk/english/even...

Easy for you to say /sk/ /s/ /ʃ/ /s/ /ŋs/

We're hosting this event at @unikent.bsky.social at the end of the month! So excited to hear all the goss about transcribing the House of Lords bickering! It's free and there is wine, so I'm in #linguistics #language

Global Britian doesn't need people with an English degree!

I received copies of my book, How to Create a Language, and couldn’t be happier! Thank you to the team at Cambridge University Press who made this dream a reality, and thank you to all my beautiful supporters! Especially thank you to @dedalvs.bsky.social for always encouraging me! #conlang

Don't forget about our great-value Mixed Basket 200 Offer, which reduces the cost of every copy to just £5 when your purchase 200 or more of our key publications in any combination: buff.ly/E3bA7rJ

Bloomin AI is even taking over pizzas now

I put my blue bin out. And within moments a fleet of blue bins emerges along the road. I am the binfluencer.

RIP Brian Patten As a student in Liverpool I carried round a copy of The Mersey Sound until it was so dog-eared I had to buy another one

RIP Tony Harrisson Saddened to to hear about this great loss. Harrisson was immense. He could do satire, lament, dramatic verse, TV, spoken word poetry, elegy, poetic journalism, translation, dialect - no finer exemplar of the classical vernacular will you find.

RIP Tony Harrison He was kind enough to let me use this poem in my Texture book - one of several of his that invariably make readers cry, specifically at exactly two and a half lines from the end

Beautifully timed appearance of this ad campaign here for my first year lecture on grammar next week!

Dem cats dem cats dem Libble Demcats He really can’t pronounce the name of his own party #LibbleDemcats

Bigger, bolder, bodelicious! The new 3rd edition of this textbook just arrived: www.routledge.com/Studying-the...

Summer’s end: tomato chutney it is, then

Ok @uniofnottingham.bsky.social Open Day, I’m ready for ya! (Croissant already eaten in Trent Cafe)

Love this! (And a reminder that all empires, however eternal-looking, will always fall) youtu.be/Xtt78SW-mgg

Just on BBC Radio Bristol to talk about the origins of ‘coconut shy’. Shy means throw, here, not timid, and they are completely separate words. I wonder if Old English sceatan (to throw) leads to the past participle ‘shot’ which is close to ‘shied’? No one knows. 1/3

This is going to be as bad as that Thomas the Tank Engine semi-live-action atrocity from a few years ago. Stop trying to remake perfect art. Go away and have some new ideas, you bloodsucking ghouls. Children's TV favourite Bagpuss to reawaken for new film www.bbc.com/news/article...

A joy to be on BBC Radio London just now talking to Shay Kaur Grewal about Multicultural London English

I’m a guru! (Plural in the Sanskrit would be guravah (nominative case) so Jess and I are guravah, except that’s masculine so it doesn’t really work. ‘Gurus’ it are then). Anyway: come to this….

So the Baronet Sir Laurie Magnus (Eton, Oxford) destroys working class single mother of a disabled child Angela Rayner, even though she took 3 sets of advice over her housing. Meanwhile the thieves den of former Tory ministerial actual crooks walk free. Honestly, this country.

Thanks, Judith, for everything you’ve done for the School.

This chunky beast just arrived - some excellent stuff in here, as well as my own bit on cognitive stylistics. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/1...

This is by one of my colleagues but honestly it is one of the great books. It’s about books, and the restorative power of reading. Buy it.

How are you taking orders now?

I will absolutely well keep off

In case you need help deciding whether or not to buy that book.

This beauty is now out in paperback! Cheaper than a cheap night out. Get it here: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-reading...