These policies, where they aren't just reiterating ones which already exist in a differently worded form, are just plain idiotic. They show not only a complete disregard for people's lives, or basic humanity, but also reality. 1/ www.gov.uk/government/p...

I probably won't bother seeing the Fennell Wuthering Heights, when there's a very good Andrea Arnold version right there, but darned if this soundtrack isn't shaping up to my album of 2026.

Today on my run an older couple were calling their dog, whose name seemed to be either ‘Glasgow’ or ‘Costco’, and either way, a choice.

University of Vibes with Institutions of X, Y and Z 🫠

These Dundee students do a great job articulating how university staff cuts impact student experience - every HE Senior Manager should read this. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

It's perhaps a little cliché to read James Baldwin's Another Country at twenty and have it change your life, but I did and it did. And I didn't reread it for ages and now am on my third read in three years, and there's so much troubling and difficult about it but it is just so much the making of me.

I’m excited to return to Aberdeen University, where I studied for my PhD a long time ago. I’ll be discussing Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho before the library’s wonderful exhibition Fear and Fascination closes. www.abdn.ac.uk/collections/whats-on/22931

I am halfway through Flashlight, and it is excellent; I also very much liked The Land in Winter. Here endeth my thoughts on the Booker.

I agree with the calls not to get complacent, but for the moment, I'm just really happy.

Aberdeen friends! I’m going to be talking about Aberdeen friends (Nan Shepherd and Agnes Mure Mackenzie, mainly) for Bookweek Scotland. Come if you can! aberdeencity.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spyd...

I bought Liadan Ní Chuinn's Every One Still Here knowing nothing about it other than that everyone said it was amazing, and oh gosh, this is amazing.

Yes! I wonder if there is a word in German (or perhaps Welsh) which captures the feeling of watching episodes of Morse in the late afternoon?

If anyone does a full taxonomy of emotions, I’d propose the very specific sadness soothed only by ITV crime dramas for the list. (Just started Unforgotten. It’s fine! Soothing!)

It’s a wonder of a novel.

This week I saw Emma Pollock (tiny gig in Aberdeen) and Gillian Welch (big gig in Glasgow), and a) my music taste in my 20s was really excellent and I picked right, but b) it now feels weird to have a night without weeping/reliving the last 30 years at a gig.

I'm not going to buy a first US edition of The Quarry Wood, but I like this cover so much more than any of the paperback reprints.

Barker called me up one night and without preamble said "It's opinions, not onions. Not onions. This is Clive Barker. I've been trying to track down and stop this error in editions for decades. OPINIONS."

Okay, I’ve broken. Closing the flat window, for my toes is froze.

I've no beef with your Pynchons and your Danielewskis, but Janice Galloway's The Trick is to Keep Breathing takes bigger risks than any of that crowd. Every time I read it I find it impossible and new.

😍 Boston, you are beautiful. #NoKings

'"This is horrifying and I want to go home," I said, although I pronounced it, "Ah, I see."' T. Kingfisher describing my day exactly right.

It's official: MY BAD: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF THE QUEER 90S AND BEYOND has a cover! I love how the yellow feels like a run over hazard sign, and the mixtape is perhaps my personal 90s icon. As for those sexy statues? You'll have to read it to find out...

As someone who believes there are only two seasons in the year that matter, asparagus and lebkuchen, I'm delighted to report I emerged from Lidl this evening with two bags of biscuits.

Reading A Room with a View - for the manyeth time, but finding a perfect paragraph I'd never dwelt on before - while listening to Rickie Lee Jones for the first (genuinely) time is about as nice as an evening at work can be.

The fun thing about aging past Maxim de Winters over multiple rereadings of Rebecca is moving from 'patriarchal tyrant' to 'aw, he's just a wee guy!' (Favourite detail on this reading: even Jasper's mum [the spaniel] doesn't get a name.)

Pocket universe filled only by items Evri claims to have delivered.

I’m watching Misery for the first time, and Kathy Bates is so aspirational. Cute neurodivergent literary critic who fights Trumpist patriarchal men? Sign me up!

Morning walk

You gotta hand it to freshers' flu. When so much in life is uncertain, here it is, late September, and I've got the sniffles again.

Honestly, the best predictor of whether or not a novel moves from the Booker longlist to shortlist is if I haven't read it yet. (I've read the Miller, which is good! And own the Choi! But that's it.) (But anyway, Sarah Hall's Helm is the book that most should be there.)

I'm not going on a much longer rant, because I don't want to give them the outrage they desire, but I am in the UK because of the Indefinite Leave to Remain scheme and want to stress that it is a) really (and unnecessarily) arduous and expensive, and b) a very good thing to have.

I've put this as required reading for two different cohorts of students within ten minutes of reading it.

Simply astonishing. Maybe Lecturer A should not have to mark over 100 essays in a two-week window in the first place? Invest in qualified staff and reduce impossible workloads FFS www.kcl.ac.uk/about/strate...

This is my 19th autumn teaching in HE, and my start-of-term jitters are just as bad as they were in 2006.

I’ve never liked the phrase ‘giving it 110%’, but I’m watching Grand Hotel, and Greta Garbo just acts MORE than any other human.

It's been a while since I read a new novel that took so much sheer joy in language as Sarah Hall's Helm.

I'll quite happily maintain that if you don't like Eleanor Morton, there's something wrong with you.

Aberdeen's 60s are best represented by its cinemas: 1965: The Rolling Stones play the Capitol 1966: The Sound of Music plays at the Odeon for nine months, with coaches coming from Inverness 1967: Joseph Strick's Ulysses is one of the only films ever banned in the city. @belmontcinema.bsky.social

New favourite Aberdeen image, from 1932.

Reading a lot about UK cinema exhibition in the 1890s, and I think there's a genuine case to be made for Queen Victoria as the first British film star.

This is such a good statement, and ending it 'We regret that, sadly, unanimity is not possible on this issue and kinder ground eludes us' is definitely language I want to use in the future.

Much of Tokyo Sonata hit /way/ too close to home, and it did lose its way 3/4 of the way through, but my word, that is one of the all-time best final scenes.

Happy leafblowers on campus season to the no one who celebrates!

Ooh, this is going to be great!

University management preparing their start-of-term updates. (Still actually from the new music video by The Beths. But still.)

There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the blight gets in.

What’s the best way to train young vampire hunters? Garlic medium education.

I rarely get excited about architecture, but this is SO gorgeous.

Never too old to have an office breakdown because Fake Plastic Trees comes on the radio.

So pleased about this news!!