@jacovides.bsky.social so nice to ‘see‘ you again!

Mr Blobby's city cousin

We had some really cool feedback from people about our @thewhale1851.bsky.social episode on Ch 9: The Sermon, which explores the scriptural story of Jonah. It turns out this chapter means a lot to loads of people, as does Jonah - a book for prisoners, miners, exiles, people in the belly of the beast

Wow, that’s shocking! and extra contemptible for the fake cutesy name

Moss Mimic would make a lovely poetry pamphlet title.

How do you guys like to relax before the busy workday? Because I like to chase my long-haired cat around in a makeshift hazmat suit with a sponge and some scissors. iykyk

I wish I’d got in there first and started my own council.

That’s over £200 of rats per month for each house on this street.

They’ve put my council tax up by 5%, argh. Just so they can buy more rats.

What is that film, the title maybe a city name, maybe a Polish film, where a pair of people have such a queasy love bond they end up going mad. She has blonde hair and is a dancer.

Haha @josephfitz.bsky.social nothing’s changed x

I’m here thinking these thoughts so you don’t have to.

And at midnight, the creature panting, growling, oozing slowly round the local allotments, eating all the cabbages. The neighbourhood whatsapp discussing the humanity of beer traps, salt.

Tough guys walking to the park with their ferocious pet, all slobbery dog jaw up front, slimy wet tail behind. Huge shell spray-painted with intimidating acronyms. Other pedestrians avoiding alleyways with glistening concrete.

Very confused listening to someone talk about a pit bull crossbred with a mollusc, until I realised it was short for ‘molossus’ — an intimidating guard dog like a mastiff.

Sorry, I hadn’t checked back. I’d assumed you meant a machine that, while harmless, injures non-experts. But now I read it and can see you just mean straightforward mechanical weaponry. Many happy returns! 🎉

Mincer. Glue gun.

Absolutely obsessed with pets gumtree now, but I’ve got to warn you not to go on it after the pub. You might wake up to find you’ve bought 40-50 budgies and a ‘very loveable’ python.

How is this even a thing?

Nice.

Or as the George Barker character from By Grand Central Station. Or the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper.

I was thinking I might go as Prince Harry from ‘Spare’

Yes, I was going to say, I feel the opposite: what's the point in only learning new ways of behaving (as in good behaviour)?

A letter from Humphrey Gilbert-Carter to Harry Richardson Creswick, 3 May 1927, containing a pressed plant with yellow flowers.

A letter from Humphrey Gilbert-Carter to Harry Richardson Creswick, 3 May 1927, containing a pressed plant, on top of a 15th-century Bible.

The smell of old books. ‘Quite a small piece of Fenugreek would make your Bible smell like a ripe cheese.’

Humphrey Gilbert-Carter, Director of @cubotanicgarden.bsky.social to Harry Creswick @theul.bsky.social, identifying a plant in a 15th-century Bible as Helichrysum stoechas. Inc.1.A.7.2[860]

Great lesson

I'm not sure, it's up his street isn't it. (Hello btw!)

yes, who needs AI?

Would you be interested? Spotted by a friend in London

A copy of The Translations of Seamus Heaney on a wooden surface.

New post!

I take an in-depth look at Seamus Heaney's Beowulf, alongside forays into Victorian translations by William Morris and the brilliantly named Athanasius Diedrich Wackerbarth.

This is based on an undergraduate lecture I gave at Oxford in 2020.

nikolasgunn.co.uk/2026/02/09/o...

I am so happy her beautiful voice has been picked up by something that will reach a lot of people.