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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16h

This is far better parenting than the tech guy getting an LLM to do the bedtime reading.

Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. Calvin’s dad conjured a dark and violent new ending to Hamster Huey, the book his child wants read to him for the umpteenth time.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Frankly unacceptable behaviour by novelist and private detective Paul Temple.

Summary
Paul Temple throws a drinks party to try and finger the gang leader...

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

…novel. As the title suggests, it’s an argument for diversity, tolerance and openness, plus some timey-wimey stuff.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Not much time for reading amongst the misery, but I did manage a couple this week. Firstly Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead (1934) in which Migrl Bathgate first meets Inspector Alleyn when his cousin is murdered at a country house weekend, during a game of Murder. Some very funny turns of phrase, but

PENGUIN BOOKS
A MAN LAY DEAD
NGAIO MARSH

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Amazing Steve Reich concert with @thecbso.bsky.social. First time I’ve heard Pendulum Music live (microphones sei ing over monitors), first ever live performance of the Takada, and virtuoso renditions of the Eastman and Reich pieces.

LIVE AT THE CENTRE STEVE REICH AT 90
Steve Reich, Pendulum Music, 10mins (entrance music)
Eastman, Buddha, 10mins
Steve Reich, New York Counterpoint, 11mins*
I. Fast. II. Slow. III. Fast Steve Reich, Runner, 16mins
I. Sixteenths. Il. Eighths. III. Quarters. IV. Eighths. V. Sixteenths
Interval
Steve Reich, Clapping Music, 3mins Midori Takada, Crossing, 9mins
Steve Reich, Vibrations for Vibes, Pianos & Strings, 25mins
I. Fast. II. Slow. III. Fast

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I’ve been enjoying Radio 3’s Steve Reich birthday celebrations but feel he deserves an afternoon slot, perhaps with a catchy jingle.

BBC Radio 2: Steve Wright in the Afternoon. Complete with photo of the cheesy sentiment-monger himself.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Currently reading A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh (1934). They’re in a country house and playing Traitors! Except that no doubt it’s about to get very real.

The Dagger
'THe idea is this, began Sir Hubert, as Vassily delicately circulated his mixture: 'you all know the usual version of the Murder Game. One person is chosen as the murderer, his identity being concealed from all the players. They scatter, and he seizes his moment to ring a bell or bang a gong. This symbolizes the 'murder. They collect and hold a trial, one person being appointed as prosecuting attorney. By intensive examination he tries to discover the "murderer"?
'Excuse me, please,' said Doctor Tokareff. 'I am still, how you say, unintelligible. I have not been so happy to gambol in susha funny sport heretobefore, so please make him for me more clearer?
'Isn't he sweet?" asked Mrs Wilde, a good deal too loudly.
'I will explain my version, said Sir Hubert, and I think it will then be quite clear. To-night at dinner one of us will be handed a little scarlet plaque by Vassily. I myself do not know upon which of the party his choice will fall, but let us pretend, for the sake of argument, that Mr Bathgate is cast by Vassily for the part of the murderer.
He will take his scarlet plaque and say nothing to any-body. He has between five-thirty to-morrow afternoon and eleven to-morrow night as the time allotted for the performance of his "murder". He must try to get one of us alone, unknown to the others, and at the crucial moment tap him on the shoulder and say, "You are the corpse." He will then switch off the lights at the main…

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I hope British students are watching and learning. Mine are treated like crap (not by me).

What started as a nationwide student protest over the state of the French education system has now descended into full-blown "urban violence", according to government officials, who briefed the media, including BFMTV and Le Figaro.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Things do look grim but this is still on the office door.

Dafydd Iwan holding up a scarf with the words ‘yma o hyd’ - still here.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Also been gifted some Mills & Boon novels by our excellent faculty administrator which takes me back to teaching the cultural history of books and reading.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This book was so important for my terrible PhD. I should apologise to Susan Suleiman

AUTHORITARIAN
FICTIONS
The Ideological
Novel as a
Literary Genre
SUSAN RUBIN SULEIMAN

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Having been expelled from our departmental library/reading room some time ago, my personal collection of critical theory has just been delivered to my office. If they sack me I’m going to need a bigger house…

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Invitation to discuss my half-sacking (or ‘variation of contract’) with HR and the dean. I wonder what it could mean…

A game show with a slogan ‘is that good’, on a neon sign and being chanted by the crowd.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

…novel for teens which unflinchingly depicts the good people of a town turning very very bad, but promotes dedication to science as the only meaningful purpose for survival.

Book: The Year When Stardust Fell by Raymond F Jones

Book: The Starcombers by Edmond Hamilton

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

If you get the chance to see Juliet and Romeo, grab it. The star-crossed lovers are in their 40s, tired and out of love. They re-stage the events of Shakespeare’s play (distorted they say) to find out where it all went wrong. Starts off funny, ends up heartbreaking.

Flyer for Juliet and Romeo, a play/dance by Lost Dog theatre company

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

New passport has arrived. Yes the freedom of movement, human rights etc. are very nice but I don’t like the sans serif typeface one little bit. I guess that makes it a San Seriffean passport (look it up, kids).

Two Irish passports. One in a nice typeface, one in a nasty one.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Week 1 of Austen’s Afterlives today - the module that’s being simultaneously abolished and used as a TEF excellence case study. This is just some of the tat and fan culture we’ll look at alongside her works, adaptations, sequels and retellings. They like The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen but…

A collection of Austen ephemera: a Darcy bobblehead; Austen’s History of England, Pride and Prejudish sponge, a crochet Jane Austen, the Austen board game and card game, Austen soap and an Austen seed tray.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Last week was not one for reading anything other than contracts, regulations and legal advice. I did however get through Marilynne Robinson’s Lila (2014), one of her Gilead, Iowa series. It’s essentially a modern take on the 1930s ‘bottom dog’ novel, except that the protagonist is a woman and the…

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Well, at the end of a long and awful week I’d like to say thanks to everyone who has been so kind and supportive. I’m also reminded of this magnificent Gogglebox exchange which university staff everywhere will appreciate.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I assume you do. So I notified HR that I intend to appeal against this decision. There reply is that there's no appeal against an involuntary reduction in hours. I can opt to be made fully redundant, and then I can appeal against that. Deep, deep sigh.

An email explaining that I cannot appeal against being half-sacked, but I can opt to be fully sacked, then appeal against that.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

My friends are amazing. @daisyeblack.bsky.social justice sent me afternoon tea in a box!

A floral card and a box containing tea and biscuits.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Got the formal notification of my half-sacking. Apparently congratulations are due!

'Your appointment is subject to a variation to your contractual terms and conditions. Your substantive contractual hours will reduce from 1.0FTE to 0.5 FTE, equivalent to 18.5 hours per week effective from 1st October 2026

Once again thank you for your valuable contribution throughout this process and congratulations on your successful appointment to your new role.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

What could be more Labour than going to a supercar factory to celebrate their launch of a massive new V12 SUV for millionaires in the midst of a worsening climate crisis?

The prime minister yukking it up with some plutocrat-fluffer and a highly-polluting luxo-barge

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I was holding it together until I got to work and found this card on my desk from a wonderful departed colleague, complete with Paradise Lost quotation.

The closing lines of Paradise Lost.

'The world was all before them,
Where to choose their place of rest
They hand in hand with wandring steps and slow
where to choose their place of rest
Through Eden took their solitary way

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It turns out that when life - or more specifically university managers - treat you like crap, people send wise advice and even flowers. Thank you all so much.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Just reading the Guardian piece on Michael Samadi, the businessman who wants rights for LLMs and none for humans, like the employees he allows it to fire. The personification of the tech sector. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

HIS AI HAS FIRED HUMANS FOR LACK OF PERFORMANCE OR FAILING TO BUILD SINCERE TIES WITH THEIR DIGITAL COLLEAGUES.
THEY WERE FAKING IT'

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Colleagues have liberated a bookcase bought by the PhD students years ago. It bears a message:

Handwritten message on the back of a bookcase: This bookcase was erected in honour of all English students! PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER!!! 11/10/16. Signed by J Church and illegibly by another person.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Despite the Writing for Children module only having a single run left I’ve kept reading potential text. Julie Hearn’s Wreckers (2013) was an odd one: a Cornish coming of age, speculative, ecological, politically dystopian plot kicked off by the opening of Pandora’s Box. Too much going on but fun.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

(Attenborough, whispering) As the other bikes charge, one of the pack is left to stand guard. Perhaps there will be a drop of electricity for this adolescent member when the others finish, perhaps not.

A group of Lime bikes and a solitary one facing the other way.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I’ve a copy. Not a great novel but full of ideas.

a Pelican Book
The Rise of the Meritocracy
Michael Young
1870-2033

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

…the boys’ libidos and sparks a civil war amongst the staff, governors and old boys. The head is replaced by a puritan zealot who causes even more damage. There’s no sex depicted but same-sex relations are handled gently and kindly for 1953, the humour is wry and the society depicted utterly gone.

PENGUIN BOOKS
The Ever-Interesting Topic
WILLIAM COOPER

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

One year sister no. 2 claimed - face smeared with chocolate - that somebody else must have eaten the entire family’s Easter Eggs. Farage’s latest excuse is even less convincing.

'I wasn't even listening' Farage says of donations scandal meeting

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Sad to be leaving Aberystwyth. What it lacks in academic excellence (compared to Bangor) it makes up for in landscape.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My latest novel was Winter by Ali Smith: the second in her Seasons quartet. I’ve now read them all, but out of order. I’ll have to re-read them in sequence now. This one’s Shakespeare play is Cymbeline and its artist is Hepworth. It’s about hospitality and family toxicity and how those things play…

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

And so to the train to Aberystwyth at an ungodly hour for my third PhD viva of the summer, and potentially my last one ever.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Delightful opening paragraph on the Guardian’s piece on Range Rover’s new all-electric child crusher.

Range Rover has launched its first electric vehicle - a year later than planned - offering a greener option for fans of gargantuan British-made SUVs who are also conscious about the climate crisis.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Total change of tone for a book gifted to me by my urban gothic PhD student with the words ‘this is terrible’. Yes, it’s Little Vampire Women by Alcott and Lynn Messina. All the didactic sentiment of the original, plus some confused politics and world-building, but some funny bits too. I did enjoy

Book: Little Vampire Women by Louisa May Alcott and Lynn Messina

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I don’t have terrible handwriting, I just refuse to complete the circuit of verificationist communication.

asemic orthography is one mechanism by which these scripted performances decline to complete the circuit of verificationist communication they
set into motion.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Then Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger. I found this one heavy going. Some brilliant writing about Covid, and being a leftwing Jewish thinker, but the framework of being frequently mistaken for Naomi Wolf felt a bit forced. The conclusion felt spot on though: as a Marxist Klein thinks Wolf and others who…

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

My next read was Robert Cormier’s The Bumblebee Flies Anyway. More famous for The Chocolate War, this one was equally cheery: terminally ill teens with a mild fantasy element and a bit of Catholicism finding some meaning in their last days of life in an experimental institution.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Sacking news arrives, 24th August. Apparently they're extending the process to…3 weeks ago.

Screenshot of a university email describing 7th August as 'within the next two weeks'.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

As a palate cleanser, I followed this with Ngaio Marsh’s Enter a Murderer (1935) - one of her better theatrical ones. Who put real bullets in the stage gun? Brisk, taut and twisty. Great fun.

PENGUIN BOOKS
ENTER A MURDERER
NGAIO MARSH

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Then I read Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, her non-fiction version of Iranges Are Not The Only Fruit, plus the story of tracking down her birth mother. I found the memoir elements deeply sad: two damaged adoptive parents damaging their daughter further.

Book: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Remember, if you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t.

A gull stealing and eating from a packet of crisps.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Next up was Feast for the Ravens by Sarah Hawksmoor. Basically a police procedural murder mystery set in the Stephen/Matilda civil war, in Worcestershire and Shropshire. Good satisfying plot, strong historical setting - an excellent read. Part of a series so I might read more of them.

Book: Feast for the Ravens by Sarah Hawkswood

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

In the week our redundancies are due to be finalised, the Faculty writes…

We are delighted to let you know that you have been nominated for The Community Spirit Award - Celebrating those who bring people together, going above and beyond to support others, creating a positive and inclusive environment where everyone feels they belong.

This nomination recognises the positive impact you make and the high regard in which your colleagues hold you. Being nominated is an achievement in itself, and we want to celebrate your contribution to our community.

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Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Still reading the huge grim critical theory book but alternating with others. Latest one was Ali Smith’s Companion Piece: sparkling Covid comedy/magical realism/condition-of-England novel with added consideration of creativity and the role of artists in crisis times.

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