Self promotion: every time I'm dragged from sleep by the yowl of mating foxes I'll post this story about the same.

Catherine Opie at the National Portrait Gallery is queer-glorious, including this gem (Julie and Pigpen, check the neck tattoo on the right) but...

I'll be basic and suggest 'get this, read the Xamie / Locas ones, in order'. I don't think the narrative's complete, but that may not be a problem, as it's often told through fragmentary everyday instances, with the context filled in by flashbacks and rumours. www.humblebundle.com/books/love-a...

I don't think the little walks are working

Strong sun sharp shadow

Happy World Book Day! I'm dressing as the Shrander from M John Harrison's 'Light', because I already own a burgundy wool coat and a sheep's skull. What are you lot cobbling together?

I shouldn't but sometimes I do

Bar staff mischarged me £8 for a tonic water and my God I nearly paid it, I nearly nodded it through, thinking 'well you haven't been out in Shoreditch for a while, o tempora etc.'. Utterly warped norms. Time to leave London.

I enjoy books which contain a bunch of biographies on a single theme: Parallel Lives (Phyllis Rose), Square Hauntings (Francesca Wade), The Husband Hunters (Anne de Courcy). Any suggestions gratefully received, particularly for more modern lives.

A jester isn't a clown but I saw this jaunty fellow and thought of you @scarygorgon.bsky.social

Impressively evocative phrase for a sticker on an abandoned fridge.

Sky over London is clear and Jupiter is just *luminous*.

And true love is eternal, but this was just a drive-by flirting and it's holding up well.

Woke with the line "I am the carrot and the stick" in my head, to the cadences of Robert Graves' "Song of Amergin". Keen to see how that will manifest. www.amergin.net/songofamergi...

This Saturday is the Goths for Breakfast charity day. Goths unite! We're raising money for Magic Breakfast to feed hungry kids with a teaching marathon of fascinating talks and writing workshops. Pop in and out as you like - the talks are recorded! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1982926549...

Today's the festival of Terminalia! Why not celebrate by setting a boundary? Tell someone you've never liked their nickname for you. Tear your arm away from the person who pats it. Insist on your lunchbreak, fridge space, pronouns. (Then offer corn, honeycombs and wine on a crude altar.)

Annoying marketing emails from Renfield

Legends. "We've got a criminal practice which takes up most of our time..."

A modest but gorgeous haul from the Brixton LGBTQ+ zine fair.

There's a silky cream dachshund at local cafe with my old name. I choose to believe that whenever a person sheds a name, it turns into an animal and scurries/lopes/flies away.

Fellow for @pjrobichaud.bsky.social below a window on Carey Street, London.

Magnitude 3: Felt by republicans, but rarely causes damage. Shaking of divine right can be noticeable. Magnitude 5: Damage to poorly constructed thrones. Magnitude 10: Permanent changes in regal cranial topography. (Can someone else make a better run at this joke, it's bothering me.)

Environs of the Royal Courts of Justice reeking of weed this morning at 9am, someone's feeling bold.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Don't strive for icy perfections.

Wondering why London blue topaz is so named. I think it's a 1980s coinage. (They're irradiated to turn them inky blue, they have to be stored for a couple of years after.)

Sea-skating! I have a pretty halcyon life, and a desire (for writing) to know the physical symptoms of extreme emotions. I save a folder of things like this, so I can feel my heart fist-squeezed with fear whenever I need it.

Age verification? Nis nu cwicra nan þe ic him modsefan minne durre sweotule asecgan.

✨ WHAT ELEGANT STARS is now funding ✨ satellites and sewists, terminals and tailors, dandies and dying stars www.kickstarter.com/projects/dav...

Ropey human art can strike a chord which more polished GenAI can't, and I'm hoping Hourly Comics Day (tomorrow) can demonstrate that. Although it's a lovely showcase for artists, I invite newcomers to join me in doodles that serve an emotional purpose and look like squashed spiders.

Recent Wuthering Heights chat has reminded me I nicked my name (in part) from the pen name of Emily Brontë. I prefer the fiction of her sisters but I know my limits, so didn't try to walk the world as a Currer or an Acton.

Sign up, this one's going to be 🔥scorching🔥.

I think of this passage quite often - esp. how others "would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes / Feed on one another". So much sharking, lately.

Hidden orange collars, and two long blue ribbon-like feathers in the centre of their tail fans.

Thinking of the balance in speculative fictions between exploring the premise and digging into the characters. Am currently enjoying something which started off doing trick shots with the novum, but is broadening into making me care about the cast.

My assertion last night that "people find The Thing attractive" required some clarification.

I was walking into a field, away from artificial lights, to watch for meteors last year. I thought: I wish someone would turn off that glaring garage lamp. It was the full moon.

Perfect ambiguous phrasing. Bad news, but in which direction?

I love unreliable narrators but am considering writing an *entirely* reliable narrator. Mercilessly self-aware, never gulled by others, god-like capacity to weigh causality. Drug-immune, never suffers those handy fictional forms of insanity. Barely subjective. Holds nothing back. Safe pair of hands.

imagine making gods of your limtations

Winter Lights at Canary Wharf this year has fewer solid things which glow, and more ethereal guests who dance, which I preferred.

Thanks to a hard-to-read karaoke songbook at the weekend, I sang a song I didn't know, which was great. But now I have a tune that I still don't know stuck in my head.

I was working in a café today when an older woman asked me to take a photo of her and her friend, hugging and chuckling under this poster. www.handmadenottingham.com/collections/...

For Burns night, a poem by Yeats. Keep thinking lately about the ways we mythologise both friends and political figures. "Maud Gonne at Howth station waiting a train / Pallas Athene in that straight back and arrogant head..." share.google/UyHzJOAMxilV...

Ambushed by the T.J.Eckleburg bus advert.

Cat, grey in the dark. Carreras Cigarette Factory, Camden. (Hard to capture the scale of incongruous objects; I think this cat is taller than I am.)

Does anyone else gets a pretty sharp camera obscura effect when using blackout curtains? I don't see it referenced in fiction, it would be a decent way to spy without meaning to.

‘Daddy, why is it a cow stops? It gets a bit of the way, but then it doesn’t seem able to get any further, ever.' That led us on to the question of limited intelligence ... It was about ten days after that that we first heard about Chocky. - John Christopher

A properly engrossing book can prevent you from noticing that your train stopped for no reason half an hour ago, and the carriage lights have gone out.