daisystu

Tawny owl

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

Photo of an empty, muddy, old plastic bottle with a single handle. The bottle is lying on soil surrounded by stones of varying shapes and sizes. The side of the bottle with handle is uppermost. The mouth end of the container points towards bottom left of the picture. There is text above the image of the plastic bottle which reads “Ancient skull found on archaeological dig is proof of our alien origins”. Having read the text, at first glance the plastic bottle looks similar to an alien skull. The body of the bottle looks like a long skull,the handle looks like a nose, and the indents with shadow either side of the handle look like eyes. An example of pareidolia!

😂😂😂

Imagine you're in a weird romcom where Paul Hollywood is your rival. Do you go "let's have a bread baking competition" or do you emphasise your own relative strengths?

Because that in short has been the central problem with the traditional two's approach to anti-immigration voters and Reform UK.

Ignore us. It clearly is a mosaic of a peacock. However, if you squint, it could be a large, long-necked bird like a goose and the peacock tail could be flames shooting from the bird's rear end.

It's not a peacock. It's a rocket-propelled goose.
#MosaicMonday

"You're irrelevant on Bluesky!"

m8 I was irrelevant on Twitter where I had 110k followers and frequently got over a million views on my videos. It was still just shitposting on a social media site. Deciding that posting is activism has rotted a lot of brains on all sides.

If your concern is that a white person who pleaded guilty received a sentence within the guidelines maybe you *want* two tier justice.

“This colorful view of a crowded reading room may show the 135th Street Library---now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture---where the country's first significant collection of African American literature, history, and prints opened in 1925. Everybody appears absorbed in their books, and the standing figure in the front looking at African art may represent the artist as a young man, delving deeper into his heritage.” Smithsonian American Art Museum

‘The Library’

1960, Jacob Lawrence

For those who don't know this story, which I first shared six years ago today....

This one time I got my days wrong at work and ended up alone in a room with my boss and the President of Ireland while I was on ketamine.

🧵

My dad has come to an arrangement with the public pool in Nottinghamshire where he swims: after everyone else has got out of the pool, he is permitted to do a somersault before he gets changed. “THEY OPEN UP THE STORAGE CUPBOARD AND LET ME GO IN THERE SO I CAN GET A GOOD RUN-UP,” he said. Last week my dad, who will be seventy in August, got his friend Malcolm, who is seventy-three, to film the somersault. “It’s shattered all his illusions,” my mum told me. “Until he saw the film he thought he was creating poetry in motion. But it’s really just an old bloke who can’t run fast doing a sideways flop.”

A thread of notes I've made in my notebook about my dad:

1. The Swimming Pool.

This is still my favourite coastal image mainly because it links what people will be doing on beaches tomorrow and what visitors would do a hundred years before it was taken. We are all different but are the same in so many ways.

‘He nails it on the first take’: how the Beatles helped my autistic son find his voice After John Harris’s son was diagnosed, conversation always seemed focused on the things he would struggle with. But a shared passion for playing music grew into something James could do – brilliantly

Morning! This is an exclusive extract from my new book Maybe I'm Amazed, about my autistic son James & how music became our shared language. Wait for the Velvet Underground bit at the end www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

It's a round sign with a yellow side, ornate wrought iron motif, and the text reads "Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Rebuilt 1667" in a sort of squished format that replicates hand-lettering. There's a hanging plant next to it.

Why do all the old-timey signs say "Ye Olde" or similar?

Because of a missing letter, thorn " þ ", which entered English as a Nordic rune, and disappeared by conversion to the letter "y" with the advent of printing.

Let's talk about it.

Frasier's Darkest Moment When the show turned a C-plot into a meditation on grief and compassion.

If you’re a Frasier fan, take a few minutes out to read this, you won’t regret it:

open.substack.com/pub/archerpa...

New Yorker cover from November 2016 showing a guy on the subway reading a newspaper with the headlines "oh, sweet Jesus please God, no "and "anything but that" and "come on."

♻️

Word of the Day is ‘uhtcearu’ [ucht-kay-aru, with the 'ch' as in the Scottish ‘loch']:

Old English for ‘the sorrow before dawn', when you lie awake in the darkness and worries crowd your mind.

How Elon Musk seized on baseless memo claim to create wave of misinformation The X owner shared false claims that a Home Office memo urged police not to intervene in child grooming cases.

The BBC has rightly been criticised for false equivalence in its reporting of Musk’s malevolent smears and the Government’s rebuttal. Below is an example of BBC journalism at its best. If only it did this consistently, across all platforms... www.bbc.com/news/article...

Asterisks are ****ing great. I swear by them.

CONTEXT: I wrote/drew this in 2020. Lol. Happy New Year!

( Not my picture) Snapdragon seed pod dried on the plant. There are five pods that resemble tiny human skulls with open mouths.

Snapdragons are my favorite flower to grow. They do however produce seed pods that look like the screaming skulls of the damned.

A recent photo of the river Exe and some trees in the mist.

Sorry, I apologise for posting Exe/tree/mist views on Bluesky.

Respect for The Mabinogion set in stone | Letters Letters: Fiona Collins finds reverence for Blodeuwedd’s story alive and well among ordinary people in Gwynedd

Would be interested to visit some day!

The Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service stands at the edge of a grassy field. Autumnal leaves are scattered around. In the distance there are trees and a steep hill, and sheep can be seen grazing. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

Garner based his character Huw (played by Raymond Llewellyn) on Bryn Hall’s groundskeeper Dafydd Rees. “It was a good time,” Dafydd wrote afterwards. “I have been to the stone. She is lonely now.” 9/9

Screenshot from episode 2 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). Gwyn (Michael Holden) looks through the hole in the Stone of Gronw. His eyes, nose and hair are framed by the circular hole.

The stone has outlived many of those who took part in the filming in 1969. Dorothy Edwards (who played Nancy) died in 1979. Edwin Richfield (Clive) died in 1990. Shockingly, Michael Holden (Gwyn) was murdered in a London pub in 1977 when he was clubbed over the head with a glass soda siphon. 8/9

A stand of evergreen trees on a hilltop is photographed through the hole in the Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service. The middle ground is intersected by fencing along a road as well as a number of trees with autumnal foliage. The hole in the stone is out of focus. Photograph taken in Llanymawddwy on 31 October 2024.

Screenshot from episode 4 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). A man’s hand holds a black-and-white photographic print of a stand of trees on a hill viewed through a circular hole.

Screenshot from episode 4 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). Close-up of a black-and-white photographic print of a stand of trees on a hill. To right of the trees there appears to be an indistinct human figure.

Screenshot from episode 4 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). Close-up of a black-and-white photographic print which is zoomed in on a human figure on a hilltop. The figure’s left arm points forward while the right arm is stretched back holding a spear as if about to throw it.

In the story Roger (played by Francis Wallis) photographs a stand of trees through the hole in the stone. Today the trees on the Bryn are still recognisable. Sadly I didn’t detect any mysterious spear-throwing or motorbike-riding figures on the hill. 7/9

Detail of an inscription carved into the Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service. In a handwriting style it reads: “Made By E. Rowlands. Aberangell.” The writing is slightly obscured by patches of lichen. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

After filming, Edward Rowlands, the stone mason, carved this inscription into the stone: “Made By E. Rowlands. Aberangell.” Reportedly this was to distinguish the stone prop from a genuine artefact. 6/9

A close-up view of the top of the Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service. The stone is weathered and festooned with moss and lichen. A field and Welsh hills are out of focus in the background. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

Garner’s daughter Ellen (in Filming the Owl Service: a children’s diary) records the stone being dressed with moss to make it look ancient. The moss and lichen growing on the stone today are entirely natural. 5/9

The Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service stands on the bank of the River Dyfi in Llanymawddwy, Wales. It is dappled in sunlight with autumnal trees lining the riverbank in the background. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

A close-up view of the hole in the Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service. The river Dyfi and opposite bank are seen out of focus through the hole. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

In a grassy field stands the Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service. Some farm buildings can be seen at the top of the field. In the distance trees line the hill. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

The Stone of Gronw made for the Granada TV adaptation of The Owl Service stands on the bank of the River Dyfi. Trees with autumn leaves line the river. The stone has a hole bored through and is inscribed with a pattern of linked whorls. Photograph taken on 31 October 2024.

Very helpfully, Wikipedia supplies coordinates for the Owl Service stone: 52° 45′ 34.68″ N, 3° 37′ 09.9″ W. So I parked up one day in Llanymawddwy, hopped over a fence into a field of sheep, and walked along the river Dyfi (Dovey) to find… the stone, standing there still. 4/9

Screenshot from episode 2 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). Roger (Francis Wallis) checks his light meter. He has set his camera on a tripod aimed at the hole in the Stone of Gronw. Gwyn (Michael Holden), standing next to the stone, is mid-conversation with Roger.

Screenshot from episode 4 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). Gwyn (Michael Holden), wearing black, speaks to Alison (Gillian Hills), wearing red. In the background Roger (Francis Wallis), wearing green, looks on with a sullen expression. The clothing colours deliberately evoke those of electrical wiring in the UK in the 1960s.

An ancient Welsh myth haunts Garner’s story. In the legend Gronw, having taken Lleu’s wife Blodeuwedd, is killed when Lleu throws a spear through the stone Gronw is holding as a shield. Three teenagers, Alison, Gwyn and Roger, are possessed by the power of the legend that resides in the valley. 3/9

Screenshot from episode 1 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). The Stone of Gronw, with its characteristic hole bored through, stands on the grassy bank of a tree-lined river.

The events in The Owl Service take place in a real setting, around Bryn Hall in Llanymawddwy, Wales. The serial, Granada TV’s first in colour, was shot on location. A local stone mason was commissioned to carve the legendary Stone of Gronw which was set into the river bank below Bryn Hall. 2/9

Screenshot from episode 1 of Granada TV’s The Owl Service (1969). Roger (Francis Wallis), standing on a riverbank, shields his eyes from the sun as looks across a valley. He is bare chested and wearing green shorts. A stone with a hole bored through stands nearby.

I went in search of the Stone of Gronw from the 1969 TV adaptation of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service. It’s still there after more than fifty years. A thread… 1/9