📚 🍫 Kate Macdonald 🧶 🐸

Have you SEEN what's on the White House website? She pointed it out, I checked.
www.facebook.com/reel/6791799...

As of 17.58 UK time on 1st Nov there's a boob shot on the About the White House page. And some very off-topic images.
www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-wh...

If it ocurred for 20 years, as an annual act, I'd say that was hate. Not judging anyone! But the sustained intent over so long is chilling. I wonder if the child lived and knew their father was being cursed annually. Sustained hatred is blighting, and generative.

Frightening.

Richard II of England, maybe. Definitely Alexander of Macedonia.

A garden border smothered in red rowan leaves with yellow birch for extra difficulty.

Did a bit of futile leaf-sweeping before breakfast but stopped because it was so pretty.

Good lord. That's hate in effigy.

My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph

We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.

America is blighted by state-paid kidnappers and bullies.

“I haven’t seen violence like this since Rwanda. The velocity and ferocity of the RSF killing civilians since Sunday is unlike anything I’ve seen in 26 years of doing this work, and HRL has been reporting on the RSF and the Sudanese war for a while,” Raymond said.

Jesus.

No, I'm a Finds Liaison Team recording volunteer. I identify and measure the objects found by detectorists, research and write the formal description for the @findsorguk.bsky.social, and then you get your finds back.

White heat writing Last Sunday I spotted a post on Bluesky about a story submission opportunity that I hadn’t seen already. I wondered what I had that might fit. I looked through my saved files of stories alrea…

I wrote about writing and submitting a story at top speed against deadlines, with Sylvia Townsend Warner as my guide.

peachfieldpress.uk/2025/10/31/w...

A silver George III bank token for 3 shillings, 1811.

A gold George III half guinea dated 1762. Folded on both sides in opposite directions and barely worn. An expensive little lost love token.

Recorded two coins this week. 🏺 One is a gold (my first !!) half guinea of George III, bent on opposite sides and directions, probably a love token. The other is a massive silver bank token made when small change was short, also George III. Same bust for both. #FindsFriday

[Scene is the entrance cabin to a NATIONAL TRUST PROPERTY AND GARDENS] 1 NATIONAL TRUST EMPLOYEE [inside cabin]: Hello there 2 [A young family - two parents two kids - have arrived at the front desk]. DAD: Hi - do you have an activity trail, for the kids? 3 NT EMPLOYEE: Of course – you’re just in time for the Autumn Gammon Trail! 4 MUM: That sounds fun, doesn’t it kids? 5 NT EMPLOYEE [handing an activity sheet and pencils to the kids]: Every autumn, the Reform Trust gammons flock back to the National Trust for the AGM. Just follow the trail round the grounds, and see how many you can spot! 6 NT EMPLOYEE [hearing something in the gardens]: Listen - that's their call [Calls emanating from the landscape]: tut-tut woke-woke 7 NT EMPLOYEE [showing the family an apparently empty fenced enclosure with some bushes in]: They are extremely sensitive and fragile... But you can bring them out of hiding if you put a little sign down mentioning slavery. 8 KIDS [pointing]: There they are! [Some little red faced PEOPLE wearing Barbour jackets and gilets emerge cautiously from the bushes. They are creeping towards a TINY SIGN in the middle of the enclosure]. [Little people noises]: woke-woke tut-tut woke-woke 9 [Close-up of the TINY SIGN - we can read that it says]: Slavery had a bit to do with building this massive house. [Noises from the little people again as they inspect the tiny sign]: tut-tut woke-woke 10 MUM [pointing]: What's that one doing there? NT EMPLOYEE: Oh, that's so sweet… 11 [We see that one of the people is sat on a rock, with a little laptop open on a tree stump, and they are furiously typing away]. NT EMPLOYEE: I think he's writing a column for the Daily Telegraph… 12 [We see close up to the little person’s screen, it is a word document reading]: Are National Trust scones secretly WOKE? [ends]

If you're a National Trust member, it's that time of year again: Midnight tonight is the deadline. It's a shame people have to keep doing this to keep a toehold on historical truth in this country, but here we are. Voting link: www.nationaltrust.org.uk/who-we-are/a...

‘Operation Raise the Colours’ Organised by Well-Known Far-Right Extremists – HOPE not hate Union Jacks and the crosses of St George have begun to appear on lampposts up and down the UK in recent days. Much of the...

This explains more about the racists behind it. share.google/lbARJn7vJwKC...

Sir David Attenborough inspires Rothbury Estate donations Sir David Attenborough inspires a surge in backing for a £30m campaign to create a nature haven.

BBC News - Sir David Attenborough inspires Rothbury Estate donations - BBC News
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Come, take this hand in yours   Come, take this hand in yours –   bury it beneath the trees,   while I go and get the rest of him   out of the deep freeze. Brian Bilsto

Today’s Halloween poem is called ‘Come, take this hand in yours’.

An acer / maple tree in a driveway border with scarlet leaves.

Malvern tree shouting very loudly at autumn that it's not ready to just chuck its leaves on the ground just yet thank you very much.

Elon Musk continues to try to socialise civil war, political & inter-ethnic violence in Britain. He combines an argument that violence is inevitable with his call at the Tommy Robinson rally for pre-emptive violence, on grounds of an existential threat & the inevitability of violence

I've written a short story in two days about a unicorn*, and in two days time it needs to be submitted. Now is the time for interested beta readers with unicorn knowledge to make themselves known. 💙📚

* as in medieval mythical white beast with a single horn, loyalty, purity, savagery etc.

A black and white map showing a city plan for ancient Mycenae.

A black and white map showing downtown NY, with small drawings of city landmarks in small snowglobes around the outside of the map. Each drawing is labeled with a number, and the map has corresponding numbers to show where the landmarks are located.

A colored fantasy-style map of a land labeled "Examploria."

A black and white map of medieval Iberia, focused on the Christian kingdoms in the northern part of the peninsula.

I draw custom maps on commission. Maps for books, games, decoration, etc. Here are a couple of examples. There are more on my website, along with a contact form and info about cost, process, etc.

If you need a map, I'm happy to help!

surprisedeelmaps.com

I'm an aunty to all my cousins' children, and I'm a white anglo-saxon Brit. What nasty restrictive relationship rules are these people forcing on the rest of the world for their petty political point-scoring?

These really are the last!

A face made of curling beans and green tomatoes.

Late harvest. 🍅🌱

A pale young woman with dark hair and red lips is crowned with laurel leaves. She wears an indigo robe that is tinted green. She holds a crystal ball in one hand. Her gaze is directed neither at the viewer nor on the crystal ball. Instead, she looks into something none of us is able to see ...

"That’s why we become #witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s a safe business, to satisfy our passion for adventure. It’s not malice, or wickedness - well, perhaps it is wickedness, for most women love that"
Sylvia Townsend Warner 'Lolly Willowes'
🎨 Beatrice Offor #BookWormSat

Are they really all called slaters north of the Tweed, and in the Highlands and Islands? Or do you need contributions of more data? Can confirm that in Aberdeenshire slaters is their true soul name.

Reform swaggered into Caerphilly, ready for a coronation. An unpleasant surprise lay in store | Will Hayward Predictions of a Reform win were wide of the mark. But Labour’s crushing byelection defeat offers important lessons too, says Guardian columnist Will Hayward

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

a man and a woman falling in a pile of red sticks ALT: a man and a woman falling in a pile of red sticks

Boxes packed, signs printed, card machine revved up and the table set dressing is selected. BristolCon tomorrow, to sell books!

Why does the Conservative Party only want to deport the poorest, and keep the richest?

The demands of formatting: six submissions, five stories Sometimes when I submit a story to a magazine the hoops to jump through are straightforward. There’s a standard format for SFF stories: Times New Roman 12pt, double-spaced, contact details at…

I wrote about my To Do list for submitting stories. 💙📚
peachfieldpress.uk/2025/10/23/t...

Screenshot of the 'pay up or we'll flood you with ads' page seen on opening Instagram.

This is new. META finally admitting they want my money or they will bludgeon me with ads. If only the ads were useful. They're certainly not getting my money so I will pay for their platforms with the data they're scraping anyway.