I can appreciate Brat Summer, but Wuthering Heights Soundtrack Spring is ultimately more to my taste. This album has gotten me through some things.

It's also so clear the people making these decisions haven't been in a classroom in years, and have no idea what the challenges of working with the current demographic are. Motivating students, and tailoring your teaching to their abilities, is a real and necessary skill.

What makes the protracted internal assault on higher education so distressing is that most of us who are targeted still fundamentally believe that universities are, or should be, or could be, good places to work, and the reality of the current environment never quite overcomes the vision.

More on the state of British academia.

Such cruelty and brutalisation effected through these processes that are dismantling disciplines and universities in the face of governmental indifference

I'm so sorry and, from a similar place, can I ask if staff student ratios are being used as a driver, and if so, if there's a particular target that's been proposed? (Trying to figure out where my institution's numbers are coming from, and assuming an external consultant.)

For almost all of high-school Hampshire was where I naturally assumed I'd study (until a last-minute decision to move further from home). I'm so sad about this.

I have apparently not had proper food poisoning before (or in years, at least), and it turns out that it’s really rubbish.

‘I see it as trafficking’: the brutal reality of life as a foreign student in the UK The long read: Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

The exploitation of many international students in UK universities is something many staff are well aware of but is rarely confronted directly. This is an excellent and important article: www.theguardian.com/education/ng...

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

Some of my earliest memories are protesting in DC during the first Reagan administration, and I'm so furious that the terrifying future I heard of as a child, and that every adult I knew was trying to steer us away from, is the one we got.

Look, I might deny my rather granola-y upbringing, but listening to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings play a full set of acoustic Grateful Dead covers is just very healing for me.

My Lenten sobriety has been surprisingly fun, and led me to try many exciting non-alcoholic beverages - who knew I'd be a cordial fan?! - but I think it's time for Lent to be over.

I put hot sauce on everything.
I enjoy drinking water with (apple cider) vinegar.
Hot sauce is mostly vinegar.

And yet you may be surprised to learn that hot sauce water is not actually particularly nice.

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.

It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

Cover of Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Childhood Animal Stories. The cover is blue, with a pen drawing of two rabbits. Dimly in the background you can see text excerpts from Watership Down, which no reader has picked up on but makes me extremely happy.

I hadn't looked up my memoir online in a while, and I'm delighted to see that the first suggestion for similar texts on Amazon is for Liza Minnelli, while on Goodreads it's Virginia Woolf. This is precisely the company I wish to keep.

Pilate at Fortingall A Latin harsh with Aramaicisms poured from his lips incessantly; it made no sense, for surely he was mad. The glade of birches shamed his rags, in paroxysms he stumbled, toga’d, furred, blear, brittle, grey. They told us he sat here beneath the yew even in downpours; ate dog-scraps. Crows flew from prehistoric stone to stone all day. ‘See him now.’ He crawled to the cattle-trough at dusk, jumbled the water till it sloshed and spilled into the hoof-mush in blue strands, slapped with useless despair each sodden cuff, and washed his hands, and watched his hands, and washed his hands, and watched his hands, and washed his hands.

Hearing a lecture on Edwin Morgan's Pilate at Fortingall in 1998 was one of the clearest memories I have of falling in love with Scottish literature.

The Beths - "Expert In A Dying Field" (Official) YouTube video by The Beths

It is an act of actual violence for my shuffle to play this on my walk to work this morning. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KAC...

Aberdeen not only will have a half marathon this summer (for the first time in several years) but a full marathon next summer (for the first time in many years)! I'm very excited. aberdeenmarathon.org

In mental health updates, I'm watching Predator films for the first time, and my expert opinion after two (the original and Prey) is that the Predator is a bit of a dick, no?

MOBY DICK is about WHALES

One Day, We Shall All Be Deans

[No one needs me to write a book on UK HE, but tempted to just to use this title.]

The strangest thing about 2026 is the appearance of t.A.T.u.'s All the Things She Said in two tv shows I've watched.

Michael Stipe lied to me; I was led to believe on days like this I would feel fine.

screenshot of two speakers' names for the Sylvia Townsend Warner conference in May 2026: Ronald Hutton (historian of witchcraft) and Diane Purkiss (historian of fairies)

Assembling the conference schedule for Lolly Willowes at 100, from The Sylvia Townsend Warner Society. Early bird registration ends 31 March, and look what treats we have!

townsendwarner.com/the-society/...

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lolly-will...
🧚🧙‍♀️

Who fails to hit deadlines? Reporters. Get rid of the reporters, instantly hit all your deadlines. Stands to reason.

May have just referred to a Kinder Bueno as a Kinny B.

It's a good day for me to be the kind of person who genuinely believes, at some level, that their value in the world is centred on how many e-mails they send.

I don't know how many current UoA students follow me here, but perhaps there are some lurkers - if you are a current student and are interested in signing this letter in support of ruling out compulsory staff redundancies (no pressure!) please do so. forms.office.com/pages/respon...

98th Academy Awards Menu Snacks Bugonion Dip One Bagel After Another Train Beans FalaF-1 HamNuts Mini Franksentein Sweets Sinnerds Clusters SentiMintal Value The Secret Agentgersnaps To Drink Martini Supreme

I've watched five Jafar Panahi films so far in March, and I think no one ends films better than he does.