Everything is largely awful, but consider also:

Time to lie face down on the floor

This morning's abstract-writing process so far: Open Word document Open notes on abstract Get a piece of cake Go outside and talk to the cat Give the cat treats Make a cup of coffee Stare out of the window Write three words, rethink them instantly (NB these are all essential parts of the process)

Your girl is languishing in grant-writing purgatory. Send cats.

Hello @classicstober.bsky.social ! @chrissieplastow.bsky.social I have loved Greek and Roman Mythology since I was a little girl!!! I have a Poetry starter pack we are an activity community! Please repost so we can connect History/Classics/Nerds/Poets/Artists to each other! go.bsky.app/6yHVpGM

Cannot recommend having constant vertigo at all, but especially while trying to meet an imminent funding deadline

I've been feeling rough all week (some kind of mystery infection + inner ear stuff so I feel seasick all the time) but I'm sitting down now to make progress on catching up with #ClassicsTober!

Only three days in but I'm finding writing for #ClassicsTober25 so rewarding. Turns out if you enjoy doing something and you do it a little bit every day (/whatever level of regularity), that feels good. #TinyJoys

Waffle and I are enjoying tuning in online this afternoon to the launch event for Women Creating Classics and Women Re-Creating Classics!

After faffing around with the usual mild terror at the idea of sharing anything creative in public, I've settled on taking this year's #ClassicsTober prompts as creative writing prompts and will be sharing poem fragments of uneven quality. Here we go! #ClassicsTober25

A reminder that #ClassicsTober starts tomorrow on @classicstober.bsky.social and the overall theme is KATABASIS.

Compulsory pear will continue until morale improves. I currently have 60 pears in my house. Everything is pears.

RIP Tony Harrison. My favourite poem of his, which I quote almost every time I open the orators: ay ay! stutterer Demosthenes/gob full of pebbles outshouting seas

Friday feeling.

Pleased to share this fascinating conversation with the brilliant playwright Caridad Svich @csvich.bsky.social, where we talked about her Iphigenia play and how to adapt Greek tragedy now. Out now in Practitioners' Voices in Classical Reception Studies! university.open.ac.uk/arts/researc...

Bought myself an early birthday present. As both a classicist and a @themountaingoats.bsky.social fan, I'm always going back to the text.

Our pear tree has made so many pears and they are ripening so fast, it is currently compulsory to eat at least one pear a day in our house. I am enforcing the Pear Rule with an increasingly sticky iron fist.

Sometimes on a Friday evening after one (1) gin and tonic you hear Somebody to Love and cry a bit about Freddie Mercury

Really going to make an effort to join in this year!

I am watching a house clearance over the road. Lots of perfectly good furniture going into a big crushing bin lorry with a St George's cross on the side. The metaphors are getting a bit heavy handed these days

Philology: the Best of All Possible Methods? A response to the apology. planudes.medium.com/the-best-of-...

Found this very clear and useful.

Please everyone dissuade me from signing up for a half marathon!!

I want to be very clear: we tried to stop this. We urged HEC to look at context and evidence, we were ignored and accused of 'betrayal'. Our full @ucucommons.bsky.social HEC report is forthcoming. If you want things to change at national level, you need to VOTE IN THE ELECTIONS.

I'm no particular fan of Banksy, but interested to see people objecting to the gavel (not used in the UK) or that judges don't make laws. Since when should art only be a literal representation of reality? The gavel makes the judge recognisable to Banksy's intended viewer, as an image of 'the law'.

Today also includes wrangling a cat who is confused by not being allowed outside on a sunny day. It's because our hazelnut tree is currently attracting many squirrels, who he spent all of yesterday morning terrorising (luckily no casualties).

Today: writing the introduction for a forthcoming edited volume, drinking coffee, peering at everything suspecting that I'll be getting a new prescription at my eye test on Thursday

Niche skeet for fellow Bristol Classics/Dimension 20 fans: I am just now finding out that Siobhan Thompson studied archaeology at Bristol and drank in the Highbury Vaults?! Mind blown!!!

If you too are feeling horrified, angry tired and/or miserable as a result of ~everything~, please direct your attention for a moment to sleepy cat face.

Disgusting and shameful.

It is a two coffees morning.

Surely this is why I have been unable to work effectively for the past two weeks. The emperor said so!

What GIF pops up when you type your name? There's only ever been one option...

Here's your annual reminder: whether you received A-level results today, years ago, or never, there's space for you at the @openuniversity.bsky.social!

How's your Monday? I forgot I had the car booked in for an MOT and service until I sat down at my desk and opened my calendar 7 minutes after the appointment. (They were nice about it but now I am frazzled.)

We're doing patio flops and belly rubs for International Cat Day.

We're down to four revisions, three of which are reading potential extra bibliography. The fourth is a good one: the chapter was originally framed around movement, but then I altered the focus to be about space more generally. Both kind colleagues who read the draft said 'isn't this about movement?'

Between faffing around on here, I've managed to do the run and 9 of 20 revisions! The chapter might even be finished tomorrow!

I'll play. One like, one Athenian legal case.

I am feeling slow slow slow today. So, accountability: first I'm going for a run to shift some energy (and thanks v much to Runna for calling 6km a 'long run' and making me feel accomplished), then I'm going to work through at least 5 of the 20 revisions I have marked on this chapter. A modest goal!

He's revising -mi(aow) verbs.

Doomscroll break. I know the hazel tree makes catkins, but this is ridiculous.

It's all exam processes this week which equals nothing postable, so instead it's time for scintillating content like: I have an insect bite on the sole of my foot, which ought to be illegal

Paper finished! Bar the inevitable final tweaks that come to me next week. Timing at 18 and a half minutes, but I also have to intro the whole panel, so that's perfect. Ending the week easy by making the handout.

Right. Time to finish this paper.

Ok, brain back to slippery mode, but a paragraph moved, a few sentences added, and estimations made that all I need now are about 700 words of saying what the point of all this is. Time to swap pomodoros for walk-and-think.

“I asked Chat GPT” “I asked Grok” Ok well I asked Sappho and she said ……. ……. ..[b]osom

Much progress made this morning! 4 x pomodoros and 1000 words added to the paper. I'm generally better at writing in the morning than the afternoon, esp. as it's getting stuffier in my office, but let's see if we can squeak out a bit more.

OOPS I found an excuse to buy yarn

Waffle's helping with the close reading.