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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar
@skionar.bsky.social
3.3K followers 1.9K following 2.1K posts
Roger Clarke. Author of A Natural History of Ghosts, published by Penguin Books (2012). Former writer for the Independent Newspaper UK, Sight & Sound. In it for the long haul with chronic ill health, colitis from childhood, CPTSD and 21 other conditions.
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · May 6
'Beautifully written, lithe, complicated and hugely rewarding' Sunday Times

'Splendid... a compelling read... Clarke manages to give goose-flesh and a giggle while informing the reader...an enviable feat' Scotland on Sunday

'Outstanding...deeply enjoyable' Shade Point
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 3h
Oh you must tell me when we finally meet!
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 4h
Magdalen, two years ago
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 4h
I just bought a ticket - please do so too if you can afford it. Very reasonable.
johnnymains.co.uk
HALLOWEIRD @johnnymains.co.uk · 5h
Dec 18th at 7pm I'll be reading from ILLUSIONS OF PRESENCE, chatting about editing anthologies and ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS (within reason and taste 😉) - tickets are £8.83 (cushion admin and fees).

I'd love to see you there, please reskeet far and wide!

www.eventbrite.com/e/illusions-...
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 5h
@hookland.bsky.social
levistahl.bsky.social
Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 6h
Wizardry itself depends on place.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 5h
I suppose Treasure is the most personally resonant to me, though whether it's their best I don't know
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 6h
Very slow off the mark, today
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 6h
It ain't over yet!
skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 6h
Looking forward to reading this. Seven Dials is one of the most freighted zones in London, up there with Bloomsbury. Slums, astrology, early gay haunt, Simeon Solomon, a psychic war-zone. There was a terrible heart-rending street murder there when we lived nearby in Soho.
Book the Songs of Seven Dials by Matt Houlbrook. Just published by Manchester University Press pp302 £20
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 6h
Had to get the DNA search , what the call Thru Lines - otherwise same
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 6h
New edition of @helleborezine.bsky.social
Looking forward to Dark Doubles. Once swore I saw my doppelganger when I was a student, in broad daylight, recognising the blue scarf I was wearing first before the face
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 6h
Like them very much
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 7h
Your comment has made my day
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 7h
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
They're all pretty awful, but I used Ancestry. com
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
My best-named ancestor is 'Humiliation Hinde', an early Quaker from Norfolk who thought so highly of the appellation he named his son so again
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
The American slant of the ancestral prompts is tedious, and favours US Civil War generals and Boston innkeepers and First Ladies over the Gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots. But my favourite on my adoptive line is being a distant cousin of Bonnie, of Bonnie & Clyde fame through the St George line.
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
I'm sad that I'm no longer 16% Scots, sad to be less Welsh but happy to be more Irish. My mysterious Swiss-German 10% would seem to be related to this mysterious and dodgy ancestor.
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
This has not inspired confidence, though one detail is reassuring, that I'm 3% Cornish which I know from simple legwork on a family tree and seems an important correction. And I'm not surprised to be 5% Danish with all the Kent farmers in my distant past from Jutish settlements
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
It's taking a while because so many family trees are marked private on the website, and because the implications are unsavoury. But I'm slowly getting there. I've also been a bit shaken by the recent massive update on this website which just reassigned all of my regional origins.
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 8h
A few months ago I decided to bite the bullet and do a DNA test, knowing the risks and downsides, in order to solve the mystery of who my great-grandfather was. He was not named on the birth certificate of my grandmother who was a teenager at the time and gave up her daughter for adoption.
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Reposted by Skionar
johnnymains.co.uk
HALLOWEIRD @johnnymains.co.uk · 1d
Will post link at the end of the week, but keep your diaries open for the evening of the 18th of December. Tickets will be a very reasonable £7.50 and the show will be 90 minutes long.
johnnymains.co.uk
HALLOWEIRD @johnnymains.co.uk · 2d
Gathering initial numbers at the moment - who would be interested in me doing an online chat (would be ticketed to raise some Xmas funds) where I read a story from ILLUSIONS OF PRESENCE then talk about my work with the British Library?
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 23h
Goodnight
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 1d
Nicked this from the Tower of London twits feed as it's Norman haircut day
Woodcut of William the Conqueror
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 1d
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skionar.bsky.social
Skionar @skionar.bsky.social · 1d
Sigh. The sooner this AI bubble bursts the better...