Obviously all these commentators are paying subscribers, right? Right? They wouldn’t just be following for the free stuff, not paying and then complaining about you not paying, would they?
Writer. Waffler. Former redhead. Occasional public sector comms person. All views my own. She/Her. Please use alt text on images. www.magslhalliday.co.uk or https://linktr.ee/magslhalliday
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Obviously all these commentators are paying subscribers, right? Right? They wouldn’t just be following for the free stuff, not paying and then complaining about you not paying, would they?
Using one photo already on your phone, what is the announcement tomorrow at 2?
Good luck to V! We are heading into the final year: one GCSE down, 7 to go.
Dispatches from the West Country: somebody’s painted 🏴s on a load of roundabouts in Penzance and the locals are furious because they also hate the English
Don’t. Someone has already been a reply guy at me today about how the government should monitor their social media. Which was my day job for 12 piffling years.
This is totally wild to me. I have one (1) idea I could pitch to the Daily Tism. The current freelance offer won’t work for me so I’m simply…not pitching for it. I shall keep my one (1) idea to myself until the pitching circs are right. No one is making anyone go for this freelance job.
I’m really impressed I got a reply guy telling not to read the replies after I explained that, y’know, is some people’s jobs.
So I was explaining to you how it works. Thanks for mansplaining back at me. God forbid a professional should flag there are junior staff seeing every bit of abuse directed at Raynor etc. not least due to safety concerns.
Some additional context is that most of local government stopped posting to X a while back and focusses on FB etc as that’s where their key audience is. I recommend reading Dan Slee’s site is you want to learn more about gov / local gov comms.
And yes, filters and mutes. But if you’re a gov account you can’t weird the block hammer in the same way because *then* you get a pile-on for “not being prepared to listen to the taxpayer” etc.
Social media burnout is a thing: when an account I managed was getting hammered, I had team members cycling on and off duty so they got breaks from reading the abuse.
Yes. Every government social media account has a social media manager whose job - or whose team’s job - is to monitor social media including compiling reports on engagement like replies. The minister will never see toxic replies: an overworked junior will be wading through it every day.
That’s infuriating! £40 for 300 words is fine for indie press work!
One of the most therapeutic things I’ve watched in a long time youtu.be/WDqJjA1Cuxw?...
Remember when X started locking itself down so it became increasingly hard to rebuild your network elsewhere?
I heard good things about both Beehiiv and Ghost, though I personally use Buttondown. Nearly all such sites offer a concierge service to help you port your subscribers over. For example: buttondown.com/features/con...
Boy do we have some exciting news… to everyone who’s been asking if we’re taking on new writers, the answer is finally yes! We’re hiring! Sharpen your pencils, comedy writers - you have two weeks to perfect your applications to be our next freelancers!
I’ve just finished The Time of The Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones. Here’s me tracking it down as the book I couldn’t remember the name of last week. bsky.app/profile/mags...
It *is* The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones!
It was it! I’ve just read it and my skin crawled at realising it was the one. Absolutely marvellous.
This scene has haunted me for 34 years. Thank you to everyone who suggested this was the book. It is the book.
I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset. In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia. In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)
I have read this book before. I think it might really be it.
So through the replies we triangulated this might be The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones. Let’s see.
So a murder mystery in a grand house in a valley, with them both as houseguests.
"Oh, I don't think so," would crush him.
I had better not express my views on RLG's Holmes here. I've been clearing out some of my non-ACD Holmes books lately as I've realised there is no way I could ever have a complete set so I should chuck the ones I didn't like.
Typing up some notes about a Cornish eccentric (born 1904) and still chuckling that one note is that they would have lived on KitKats if they could.
Oh, but now I'm imagining the crossover. A retired Holmes, sent to solve a puzzle in the village near his cottage. Only the young Miss Marple is there and she eviscerates him. Is it possible St Mary Mead is in the Sussex Downs?
Sherlock, if all his disguises were just him pretending to be an absent-minded old lady of the old school. Hickson's murmured "oh dear...oh dear..." before she ruthlessly gets all the information out of the post mistress in Nemesis is a delight.
I think I deserve a medal for not sharing my views of the trustafarian/anti-vaxxer/Tory town some replies were suggesting was better.
Red Panda bao are fantastic.
Although I love the bas-relief of Saint Sidwell as the model was my much-missed neighbour.
The view of the cathedral from the bar at Hotel Indigo is meant to be amazing, as is the food, but the service is slow. Hubbox do good burgers and chips, and are a regional chain. The underground passages are unique, if you’re not claustrophobic. exeter.gov.uk/leisure-and-...
Some great old-fashioned journalism right here
That's your lot, have a lovely weekend, please don't complain about the gift links and remember to wonder if someone has tweeted "a reporter told me the president is dead" why 'the reporter' is doing their job by informing the public one by one #mediastudies
Every actor takes a turn stealing the film. You think Isaacs has it and then Simon Russell Beale just brings the terror.
It’s over two hours each way for me and I’m only in Devon.
Kresen Kernow (the Cornish Archives) also has an amazing cafe downstairs. Ideal for the real time storyline.
Today’s an archive day when I’ll be off researching for @westcountrymodern.bsky.social So anything interesting is most likely to happen between 1.30 and 4pm BST when I have to be working in silence.
Everyone should watch Death of Stalin. It’s a great film. It may be the bleakest, blackest comedy I’ve ever seen. And made me cry laughing.
Chatting to teen today and we realised we couldn’t think of a Hayao Miyazaki film that has any scenes in snow. I’m not sure I can even think of any set in autumn or winter *at all*. What have we forgotten?
Children are ***82%*** more likely to be killed when hit by an SUV than by a regular passenger car. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
The urge to post this in the street what’s app (30+ posts about dropped curbs alone this week) is high. But that would make me the Kyle.
The first letter this morning is such a giant “hell no” that I can’t even…. Hell no. It’s 2025 not 1975.
If it’s not NTSC playing on a UK VHS dual type machine, it doesn’t count.
Your occasional reminder to report and block fast, rather than give a boost to hateful content. They want your outrage: give them nothing. Especially transphobic accounts with 4 whole followers. They need your outrage to grow their reach. Don’t give them it.
Of course, some collections are fairly benign. Like Tom Brown, an Appalachian man who collects rare apples.
I suspect queuing for street food in St Nicholas Market isn’t her thing.
The embargo has been lifted, so I can give a content warning for this week’s Strange New Worlds. It is for transphobia what “Code of Honor” was for anti-Black racism. It’s also sexist, racist and ableist. A character played by a queer non-binary actor is depicted as a predatory groomer for laughs.
Let’s open the doors up again shall we? Deadlines for pitches is September 12th 2025!
I miss the days when it was socially unacceptable to talk like a Nazi
@pollyrowena.bsky.social on nature writing, chronic illness, and the controversy surrounding Raynor Winn’s memoir, The Salt Path.
Bath to Glasgow (400mi) In a bog-standard second-hand EV full of loads of heavy kit. Google Maps says 7 hours if there’s no traffic/delays/detours, and I piss in a bottle the whole way. AC on, 70mph, Eco mode off. According to right wing press I’ll be dead in a ditch by now, so how did it go?
people often ask what’s wrong with gen x, and, like, there are a lot of answers, but i think the AIDS epidemic and the specific people it wiped out is probably an under discussed contributor to the bomber with red dots diagram
Thanks, but we think we've found it: the Time of the Ghost by Diane Wynn Jones.
If you read the replies, or my own quote post, we think we found it.
The power of BlueSky! I’ve been trying to identity this book for 15+ years. I just ordered a copy off eBay after the replies triangulated in on The Time of The Ghost by Diane Wynn Jones.
I have just bought a 1980s edition on eBay as a payday treat. Maybe.
I think…I think we have a winner. And as it’s DWJ there’s a chance my library may have it! Although not in that edition.
This seems to fit the description. And may also solve the inexplicable fact I never read much DWJ as a teen.
A shiny pound coin/bag of sweeties to the first Lobby Hack to ask all these politicians who are Very Concerned About The Safety Of Us Delicate Lil Ladies if maybe there should be rules about MPs working with public after SA/DV charges, or a conviction for such disqualifying them from running.
My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com
I send a gift package to the US every six weeks or so. Two of the last three had been opened by the time they reached the recipient. I can see US Customs getting even more fond of opening the post after this.
No matter how many times I am told it I still cannot believe Americans have screwed up saying Bologna this badly
Team up so people get both books. Like when your parents bought the wrong book for you for Christmas even though you wrote the title down and everything.
When I’m the showrunner of Doctor Who it’s going to be wall to wall adaptations of the 8th Doctor Adventures for the 3 weeks it takes to get cancelled forever.
It’s not Stig: I read that at school. I don’t think it’s Mystery Long Barrow House as I’m fairly sure there are sisters.
This sounds like it!
I could write it, then when the reviews come in scour them for one that says “this is just like Book Title by Author Name”?
I think I read that one! But I think my half-remembered book was a modern girl.
Thanks! A few titles ring bells but then searching for them reveals plots that don’t seem right.
The Breeders
I’m just glad someone remembers a book with three sisters too!
Hmm. Maybe? I could have sworn the girl has sisters though. I can see that’s on the internet archive so may start reading it to see.
as far as explaining gender to kids, "some people switch from boy to girl or boy to girl or whatever" is like a hundred times easier than explaining that we saw their teacher at the grocery store because she does not live at the school
I don’t think so but I may double-check. I remember the Paperhouse adaptation of that.
Ways to cool your city.
This was The Giant Under the Snow (hat tip to the other people suggesting it!)
Nope! That’s the one I read a couple of years back hoping it was the one. It wasn’t. Fantastic cover though!
The restorative powers of a Bank Holiday by the sea (1958) Father in particular seems to have … blossomed John Bull Magazine Artist: G Critchlow
Nope! I know Children of the Stones! It was definitely barrows, not stones.
I don’t think it’s a Green Knowe, else I’d have read the series and I didn’t.
I know which one that is! Someone suggested it a few years ago and I read it, but it wasn’t the one.
Likewise! These days I keep a book diary to help my memory but tween me didn’t think to do that. I borrowed all the Garner books, and all the Susan Coopers so many times, and bought them at car boot sales. I clearly never saw this one again.
We’ve a photo somewhere of my older siblings off on holiday in the 1960s and there is strong “you’re wearing your school coat and shoes to travel in because they’re sturdy” vibes to it.
Possibly. I mostly remember the girl walking through it at night, in the mist. I want to say there were barrow wraiths but I’m not sure. I think there probably were.
That sounds like it. The imagery stuck with me but not, annoyingly, the name of the book.
Every now and then I ask this. Does anyone remember the name of a 1970s British children’s book (for 8-12yo) in which a girl lives in a house surrounded by Bronze Age barrows? Think like Alan Garner, but not him. Almost definitely a Puffin book.
Definitely Double Knitting. From being double the weight of 4-ply.
#OnThisDay, 24 Aug 1896, an unknown woman cyclist has a beer at the bar in New Jersey - making headlines in the New York Times. Chapeau! #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Cycling #AmericanHistory 🗃️
Not many farmers would tell you that we need to eat less meat; that wealthy landowners shouldn’t moan about inheritance tax but should “pay the whole fucking lot”; & that Reform UK are “a load of rich rightwing toffs” 😂 But Devon farmer Guy Singh-Watson does: www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Steve Shirley escaped the Holocaust as a child & went on to found one of the earliest software startups. The really impressive part? She employed women programmers who had been pushed out of the workforce after having kids, & allowed them flexible, family friendly, work from home jobs—in the 1960s!
I think the shoddy TV I was using probably enhanced it: like it was a transmission from a parallel world.
I discover I love studying the history of design, way more than history of art. (I did my thesis in film history though). Several decades on, and I’m a writer. I’m even writing about modernist architecture. Other choices led me here: but Brazil was the film that diverted me onto this path. 5/5
Just two polytechnics offer degrees in the history of art *and* film. And both courses also ask you to study the history of design. I apply. I get a place. I plan to focus on art and film. 4/5
After watching Brazil on an interference-fuzzy TV screen, I look again at the UCAS guide. And I think about how much I enjoyed working at a cinema when I was at sixth form college. Watching how people reacted, en masse, to films. How films *made* people react. 3/5
I watch to the end, utterly captured by it. The midcentury dystopia of it. Those baby masks. I’m at art college at the time, doing a foundation course which I’m not loving. I am doing well with the essays about art history though. And I need to pick my degree. 2/5
It’s 1989. Maybe 1990. I have a black and white portable TV in my room in a shared house. The kind of TV with a dial. It’s late, and I’m spinning the dial to see what’s on. A picture comes into focus. It’s Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Probably on BBC2. 1/5
NEW blog klaxon! We wanna be free! We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do. Something about fanthologies to tie to Party Like It's 1998 from @obversebooks.co.uk. Away, baby, let's go!