Went to have blood taken earlier and the phlebotomist took one look at my left arm and just said "nope" before moving onto the other arm. That arm got some "hmmmm" and asking if I was hydrated (I was). But we got our 4 tubes! This is good for me.
Pronouns em/em/eir (they're singular, nice and easy) Trainee counsellor, attempting to write eir dead father's memoir, bookish, lefty, nerdy, disabled and British. https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/skeletonrobin
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Went to have blood taken earlier and the phlebotomist took one look at my left arm and just said "nope" before moving onto the other arm. That arm got some "hmmmm" and asking if I was hydrated (I was). But we got our 4 tubes! This is good for me.
One thing we can thank the covid pandemic for is popularising QR codes again. (And mrna vaccine tech i guess that's cool too)
Me: I won't need a rain jacket The rain: oh ho ho
That's also a lovely alt text
I cried at the Dr but I feel so much better now. There's still concerns and future appointments but that horrible paralysing anxiety has lifted at least.
Ok new daft theory: the driver has dirt on Giuliani so Giuliani released the press statement to shift attention away from and protect the driver.
Police gossip since the first on scene for his accident were the people attending to the DV incident. Easy for somebody to have let slip details
So the driver was just rubbernecking and caused an accident?
Jeebus
I think I need to do some things so I don't just go very into my own head. But I have put a favorite audiobook on and made a cup of tea.
Stressful Dr appointment at 16:30 so of course I'm a ball of anxiety and struggling to do anything even remotely useful today. I just want to hide under a blanket all day.
Yesterday forced to flee our home under bombardment, and now we are homeless on the streets, without shelter or a tent to protect us. My children are sleeping on the ground under the open sky, without safety or shelter. We need your support to provide a place to take shelter. 🙏💔 gofund.me/d6418ba2
Great Yarmouth is set to host the biggest neo-nazi music festival in over a decade. The Home Office has the power to block entry of overseas bands, which will scupper the promoters plans. But they won’t act unless we demand it. Email the Home Office now: hopenothate.org.uk/2025/08/28/g...
The state that people are leaving music festival sites in is astoundingly bad. It seems to be getting worse each year instead of better. Where did this idea that all your camping gear was just disposable come from? Why do people think it's OK to leave rubbish and not even attempt to tidy up?
That took far too long. Pruning down the herbs. I've given away a lot and still have piles left over. Wish I had "before" pictures. The lavender was enormous. Everything smells wonderful.
SIGNS OF FASCISM 🪧
And Mara and Bonedog!
I need a lost and found system that can actually locate items
Yes. I lost mine in June and i really miss it.
I think my aversion first time around was that they were *shock* new characters and not the comfortable old favourites. And it felt like a world closer to ours and therefore less satire, less metaphor, less *cosy* than previously. But I think both I and the novel have aged well. (I hope I have)
Reread #TerryPratchett Going Postal this month (my bedtime audiobook) and enjoyed it more than the first time. I do think Pratchett's style changed a bit around this time - it feels like there's a little less finesse, it's more on the nose - but it still retains the essential Discworldiness 📚💙🪐
I do want ghost cats
I know it's full on PMDD when I'm super on edge and my brain is looking for something to be anxious about to match the biochemistry that's going on. Plus I'm about ready to burst into tears with anything remotely nice/pleasant/good. (Like a neighbour giving away boxes of damsons)
I am a mother from Gaza tired and sick, with no strength left. My children eat only a little, and everything here has become so expensive. Sometimes I go hungry just to give them a small piece of bread, and still it’s never enough.💔 gofund.me/e53b4cdd
I’ve needed to make this for a bit- but here’s a thread of people who are being forced out of Gaza City- a lot of people living in Gaza City have been in bombed out buildings so they don’t have tents and also they need transportation. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Of course it's a rental.
This very much is why we are upset. We have followed the rules that have been set by cis people every step of the way, and now you turn around and say, sorry but you don't have the rights you think you have.
resharing this but yeah, it's the same playbook they use to blame "mentally ill" people ... when the data shows us people with psych diagnoses are disproportionately victims of violence, statistically, and not likelier than 'sane' people to cause it ... www.cnn.com/2018/02/26/o...
Well done!
Trans people are being banned from blue sky for saying Rowling is Voldemort. She is worse, she's a real life boogy person using her vast wealth to harm a whole community. Below are a couple of doodles, showing Rowling as I see her. #transright #art #voldemort
That's stunning
Every elected official in the West needs to answer for this. This is what their dithering and inaction and continued arms shipments to Isreal enabled. This kid should've been playing football with his friends. And men like Jack Lew and Joe Biden should be in his place.
I love these!
Give me a few weeks and I'll be fine. (OK maybe a couple of months) I can't afford to be less restrained with book buying and I make use of my library when I can. I'm also usually excited to read a book I've bought so I'm usually starting before I buy another.
Latest in my mental health memoir adventure. I'm only 2 chapters in and would recommend it. It is written with such care and sensitivity. The author's decree to take a break, have a cuppa and reflect after chapter 2 is warranted. This Book Could Save Your Life by Ben West #memoir #nonfiction 📚💙💡
The problem that FWS has not created, but that Sex Matters and co are insisting it has done, is a logical fallacy about balancing of "conflicting rights". The TERF take on FWS is that when women's rights and trans rights "conflict", women's rights *always* take precedence. This is a nonsense. 2/
The "women's space" can just as easily be the cubicle on the 3rd floor: what part of FWS would that fail to respect? It would be a single sex space, and meanwhile the normal female facilities could be used by everyone who identifies as female. Everyone gets their supposedly necessary safe space. 4/
There are many atheist and agnostic Quakers and some Meetings which specifically focus on that (compared to sort of general Meetings - the majority- or those which are specifically Christian adjacent)
But everything was demonstrably fine for YEARS before the great Mumsnet Indoctrination. The terrifying hypotheticals thrown around over inclusive toilet practices are already known to not reflect reality. Absence of attention isn't absence of evidence, as even babies are eventually able to work out.
I do not understand picklemania
Today's lovely little thing: Quietly singing along to the music playing in the market, catching the eye of the older woman also quietly singing along to herself, both nodding (just once) and enjoying our quiet little duet over the vegetables.
Trying to figure out if some of my critique of a book not delivering what I expected is down to the marketing/synopsis, the writing, or my own assumptions. 📚💙
@robinxbird.bsky.social I haven’t eaten in days, and my baby cries all night from hunger. We’re not asking for much — just enough to stay alive. Please… don’t ignore this message. We are desperate. 💔🙏
Perfect evening
To coincide with Leicester Pride this year we're debuting a new project: 'Communion: A Queer Christian Zine', created with an ethos of grassroots organising and radical sharing, with the finished product being freely available for anyone to print and distribute among their own communities.
Ok I'll be honest I'm not sure on my views of Nottinghamshire
My second novel, 1983, is now out in paperback. Roscoe and I have decided to give away signed copies to 4 randomly selected people who repost this and pop a reply below. You might like it if you like: The old, fun idea of The Future D&D Nottinghamshire Robots Imaginative children Aliens Mining
Esam really needs to leave the area he is in
Hmmm maybe I could solve all my problems with hash browns
That flash of green is stunning
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
News website: war, fascism, bigotry, crime, war, fascism, bigotry, crime ... Me: 😩 News website: ancient bog restoration Me: 🤩 Now we're talking.
Oh this makes such a difference. I like it, I might start using it.
i stopped using the phrase "friends with benefits" a long time ago because it felt transactional. lately i've started saying "intimate friends" instead and i tell ya it feels so much nicer. it frames those relationships (lowercase R) in a way FWB never quite fit.
Time to flip the dark pancake
Blessed is the panquiox when we prepare the shrove for hibernation.
Would also like the cozy or Knives Out vibes.
Without downloading any new images, where are you mentally?
I was never a real memoir reader before this summer (I'd only read a couple) but I think I'm sold. Especially when they're well written. The poorly written ones really stand out.
I'm so on board with this and once I've figured out what I need for The Book, I definitely want to expand my reading to include different demographics (strong focus on "average white men" right now)
Ahah! My supervisor told me all the reading i've been doing for The Book, all the memoirs, counts towards my CPD. Partially because I've had a focus on mental health memoirs but also because of how it helps me understand and empathise with people and let's be honest that's a key of counselling. 📚💙💡
It's a great name though
This is how I learn that there's a Dr Who convention in West Kirby
An M.I.T. study found that 95% of companies that had invested in A.I. tools were seeing zero return. It jibes with the emerging idea that generative A.I., “in its current incarnation, simply isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be,” johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.
I am eternally bad at chess. Trying to learn makes me angry at the very existence of chess
Maybe reverse it for sheep.
All "paper" is flimsies and always will be
Put reflective material in your windows if you really struggle with internal temps. Plain old kitchen foil works but you can also get special stuff which is even more effective.
How dare they be so cool.
I hope one thing leftists all take away from Mamdani’s campaign though is that it doesn’t matter how chill and wholesome you are, the dinguses are going to smear and trash you in increasingly unhinged ways anyway, so you might as well shoot for the moon and campaign on what makes your heart sing
Research
Yes they some how manage to find the time and staff to go through your bank records (for UC)
This is a delight
Mating season in that stort of climate I think (I know European spiders more than US tbh)
Tall about the fucking barmey army
There are many more nuanced and critical takes of course. But I just can't shake this deep feeling of second hand embarrassment over it all. What are you *doing* Tommy? Put your flag away for God's sake. People will *see*. Urgh.
What gets me about this whole flag thing is that it's so uncharacteristically, embarrassingly, un-British. What's happened to the stiff upper lip. What's happened to restrained emotions? Like calm your tits. Yes, yes your a raving nationalist but don't make such a show of it.
Yeah this is intensely weird.
Yes, even if you're calling out racists and bigots.
I just sneezed and but my tongue. Why am I like this.
Oh gods there are people being WRONG about forensic anthropology on the Internet. I must stay strong
It's simple, if you throw paint on a plane then you get proscribed and any 80 year olds defending you get arrested. If you ask people to burn down hotels, and they try, you get an interview in the Telegraph and positive coverage in the BBC. That's sensible, proportionate policing.
63% of people think net migration rose in the last 12 months 8% of people think it fell Yet it fell by 400,000 in 2024 vs 2023 [It is falling further in 2025] Public service broadcasters are doing a core part of their job on this topic badly if that 8% is not closer to 30% at least
Something very very weird happened during the Hugos award ceremony... It's been on my mind for days, and so I wrote this blog: "When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident" grigorylukin.com/2025/08/21/w... #Worldcon
listen the world is a mess but a judge ordered the Florida migrant prison closed, California passed their "fuck around, find out" redistricting, and James Dobson is dead this is the best net good news day in awhile, I really do think
Next up on my memoir exploration is The Far Side of the Moon by Clive Stafford Smith (care of my local library) 💙📚💡
Will now I've got to go and see what it is
Please do not offer further spelling options. My little dyslexic brain can barely handle British spelling.
Next week, I will be having surgery to amputate both legs above the knee due to complications from EDS and erythromelalgia. My sister has kindly put together a GFM. Please share and consider donating if you are in a position to do so! www.gofundme.com/f/corins-sur...
Their memorials are history. Ours are political. Because as always, there are two sexualities - straight, and political. Two genders - male, and political. Two religions - Christian, and political. Two races - white, and political.
I still have to check the spelling of counsellor and counselling several times a week
The amount of gambling ads on TV at the moment is ridiculous. It's predatory. Just sticking a "gambling aware" logo in the corner doesn't make it better.
I was watching a detective drama in which they were literally investigating a kidnapping. I think I'm gonna be OK, but at least 5 other crimes are going to be uncovered along the way.
Please help Esam if u are able
No writing progress this week so far. I've deliberately taken time off for rest post festival. Honestly I didn't think I'd even be well enough to contemplate any work this week but I might actually be able to do some tomorrow.