Really enjoyed Parasite Moon Orchestra by Ghaaro. No plot as such, but a series of unsettling glimpses into a busy, complicated world.

"How do you solve a problem like Maria?" 🎶 Methylphenidate.

I would use the haunted binoculars, no question. I don't care about the insanity. The ghostly figure would come looming out of the ruins and I'd thwart him with a firm, "Not today, thank you!" and continue enjoying all the historical sights with my fun binoculars. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGh0...

I've been thinking about this sign for 6 months. a phrase I'll treasure forever. a metaphor with boundless potential

Watching THE GREEN KNIGHT again

Wishing everyone on the Boxing Day hunts a very merry fall off and die.

She's an icon, she's a legend, she is the moment.

Christmas is hard for many. The years roll, the ghosts at the table increase. We’re haunted by the absence of voices, of laughter engines who drank and ate with us. This can be day of remembrance rituals. For what it’s worth, Hooklanders near and far are in my candles today. Be gentle on yourselves.

I miss my mum the worst at Christmas, but I know she wouldn't mind me telling the story of the time we were at nine lessons and carols (we were a church-going family, not just Easter and Christmas) and a wardrobe malfunction reduced us to convulsing wrecks.

I find it moving that David Lynch loved IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE so much he couldn't talk about it without crying. His sincere belief in the redemptive possibilities contained in that film and what it said about people seems to me like a key element of understanding his own work.

Good old E.F. Benson. "Welcome to your recurring dream, Roger. Jack will show you to your room. I've given you the one in the repressed homosexual terror cylinder— I mean tower."

Always an absolute joy to catch @nunkie.bsky.social's Christmas ghost story reading. It isn't Christmas without M.R. James.

Merry Christmas, you wonderful old building-and-loan! (That's you lot.)

i had to drop what i was doing to make this

Okay, so... I need a lift to Wales.

Seriously, fuck off. I say that with all due gravity.

As promised, a thread of nautical canines! Here’s ‘HMV’, rescued from floating wreckage in the Atlantic by the sloop HMS Freetown in 1944. His unusual name came from the way he was sitting when rescued, which resembled the dog used in the record company’s advertising. 📷 IWM A 21707 🧵1/15

Me, age 6: How come all the grown-ups in my life are so sad around Christmas? Don't they like presents? Me, age 36: Oh

We've acquired a bag of sprouts. I've never cooked sprouts before, but I'm no coward - tell me your best Christmas sprout recipes.

So, just to confirm, the BBC can’t keep Robin Ince on the air because his trans allyship brings the organisation into disrepute, but they can keep David Walliams, who performed Nazi salutes at the recording of this very show, on the air despite him being predatory towards women. Cool. Very normal.

Merry Christmas to the two high vis clad lads sitting in their work van, blasting Wonderful Christmas time & passing a whole huge panettone back & forth, taking bites out of it as if it was a big burger

Happy Solstice to everyone with SAD. We're on the home stretch now, lads. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgKD...

It’s time once again to bring out that Solstice Fudge #WinterSolstice

To me, Christmas isn't about perfection or consumerism. It's about family togetherness. It's about decorating your cottage with acorns and goblin bones. It's about riding a colossal owl through an eldritch snowstorm. It's about crawling through a tunnel and feeding grubs to the Peppermint Man.

I keep meaning to play this. It looks so good.

Cosy jumper time.

This year I made a tiny booklet of linocuts with @chrissywilliams.bsky.social, Fight the Moon. Chrissy supplied the maxims and requested crude icons that you might carry into battle for that cause.

*lengthy toilet flushing noise*

For anyone who isn’t aware, Walliams’ book sales propped HC UK up for years. While his behaviour was a poorly kept secret. Money > staff safety. Some serious questions should be asked of them IMHO.

I made a video for @wired.com answering questions from the internet about Victorian history! youtu.be/10iYlK7bsJw?...

Having a big pain flare and waiting to hear from the doctor. This is holly jolly bullshit.

#BOTD Hector Hugh Munro aka Saki. He wrote some of the sharpest satires of the Edwardian age, often using macabre or supernatural motifs to send up his subjects, or to horrify his readers. He fought heroically in WW1, despite being too old to enlist, and died in the trenches. #author #ghosts #horror

I know the bar is on the floor, but I really love how Disturbia doesn't edit out their models' body hair. Even facial fluff.

This is so cute, but my favourite bit by far was when the interviewer asked"If Jesus was born today, who would come and see him?" and an earnest little boy confidently answered "Harold Wilson." www.youtube.com/watch?v=riH9...

An old school socialist is the new head of Unison, the UK’s biggest union, and it raises an important question for Labour's front bench. They're all asking each other what a "socialist" is.

I will fight you in a Wetherspoons carpark.

HMP Bronzefield has been refusing Qesser’s pleas to call an ambulance for imminent hospital treatment. The Justice Secretary must immediately intervene to save their lives.

Qesser Zuhrah and Amy Gardiner-Gibson are on day 46 of their hunger strike. Heba Muraisi is on day 45. All are at a high risk of death. In 1981 - the last time there was a hunger strike like this - Martin Hurson died after 46 days.

"look we're not using AI in the final product we're just using it to speed up the conceptual stage" is what a lot of dopes affecting an enlightened middle position keep saying. I truly do not get that one. You hate imagining stuff? You don't like thinking and conceptualizing? Get a grip

Retail Hell: Festive Edition. Best one I ever had was the man who marched into the shop with a live baby turkey on his shoulder. He harassed each member of staff in turn, asking if we'd eat said turkey, and then dumped a pile of items on the cash desk and said, "No tills. I only barter."

I'll be doing the final Post Office run this week, so if you want a really strange signed book, now's your chance.

The Norwich Cathedral Cat, on the pulpit, drinking from the glass of water left for the Reverend. “He lives here” we were told, as if the church had had no say in the matter and his presence pre-dated the building. “He’s named Budge because he doesn’t budge. He thinks the water is left for him”

Enchanted by the powerfully crap AI image on the cover of our local magazine. A statue of a Stuart monarch (?) with a full beard, two massive lacy ruffs a century out of fashion, a gaping hole where his left eye should be, and a lightbulb with legs for a friend. Neon gobbledegook overhead.

Writers who use genAI for illustrations are class traitors. We all have to fight this beast TOGETHER. We are not just trying to save SOME of our livelihoods.

Cute fact: Unbound did not pay my mum for any of the many illustrations she did for the seven books I wrote for them. Nor did they pay my parents for the countless pieces of original art they offered as pledge rewards. They just took the money. And then, eventually, they stopped paying me too.

Just saw It's A Wonderful Life on the big screen for the first time (we watch it every year) and did some Christmas Crying.

This time last year, my appendix decided to detonate. I sat in A&E at 3AM listening to two very battered young men coming up with a plausible story so their mums wouldn't find out they'd been in a bar fight.

insanely good thing to say when you enter a room