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Plashing Vole

@plashingvole.bsky.social

4.6K followers 3.2K following 4.1K posts

Mild-mannered lecturer by day…mild-mannered lecturer by night. Welsh lit, politicians’ fictions. Fencer, cyclist, UCU. Dysgwr Cymraeg; tá gaeilge agam. Barnau fy hun. Read books; join unions; block cookies.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16m

Legend has it that the polytechnic as was refused to make way for a big council redevelopment so they rammed the ring road through the campus out of spite. I hope it’s true. The library (opposite a Saxon-Norman church) is built on a plague burial ground. Sadly ghosts don’t contribute to recruitment.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 20m

A very fair point.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 56m

Wow! Hurray!

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 57m

Or made it, given decades of columns pouring out hatred.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1h

My favourite bit: Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn explains that he’s a better writer than Tolstoy.

Exchange in which Richard Littlejohn tells Will Self that Littlejohn’s novel is ‘much more complex’ than Tolstoy.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1h

It does. He returns to the theme later:

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1h

With thanks to @pressfuturist for remembering that it was Littlejohn v Self, not Bushell v Self, a literary conversation of the ages.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1390...

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1h

Straddling both sides with a murder-subway you say?

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1h

I can’t tell these reactionaries apart!

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1h

Ah, that’s the one! Thank you!

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 2h

You’re absolutely right. Tone, vocabulary, the lot.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 2h

I’m desperately sad that the transcript of Garry Bushell and Will Self discussing each other’s novels on R1 or 2’s book review show (Mayo? Kermode?) has disappeared. I used to read it whenever I felt sad.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 3h

He definitely retconned an awful lot. He also said his kids hated the patronising narrator.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 3h

Now that’s done this week’s remaining lectures are on picture books for Children’s Lit, Foucault’s What Is An Author for the MA and Northanger Abbey for the Austen module. Plus PhD progression review for someone in the history department.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 3h

Perfect!

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 3h

I have such huge moral and philosophical reservations, but it still works as a good snappy children’s story.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 3h

To be fair I did also link it to News From Nowhere and Wind in the Willows.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 4h

Only three feet tall.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 4h

You’re so right. Though I listen to Nowhere more often.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 4h

It’s The Hobbit in Round The Wrekin today. Ruined their lives by reading it as the kids version of Spengler’s The Decline of the West and playing them Nimoy’s Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.

gollum from the lord of the rings is smiling and looking at the camera while sitting on a rock .

ALT: gollum from the lord of the rings is smiling and looking at the camera while sitting on a rock .

media.tenor.com

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 8h

Just finished Gladys Mitchell’s Death at the Opera (1934). A mixed bag: as a dry, witty study of an enclosed society (the staff and a few students at a progressive private school) it’s superb; the psychoanalyst pensioner detective Mrs Bradley is fun; the plot is pretty poor.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16h

Episode 31 of #JupiterMoon, the space-campus soap from the 90s. The very expensive satellite campus (literally) Copernicus is adrift in space, a colossal waste of money and lives. Management has no idea what to do about it. The prescience continues…

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Reposted by Plashing Vole

Daisy Black @daisyeblack.bsky.social · 18h

A wild week beckons, with 'Yde and Olive' in Leamington Spa on Tues and Edinburgh on Fri.
I'm teaching it on my Queer Medieval module too, so my students will likely give me new ideas for the performances!
Leamington: daisyblack.uk/event/storyt...
Edinburgh: daisyblack.uk/event/yde-an...

Yde and Olive at Leamington Literary Society – Daisy Black

daisyblack.uk

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 1d

She certainly does. They were all very comfortable with stereotypes.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 2d

Sorry Bethan. Hope it’s not too rough.

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