Ian McMillan

Out my kitchen window, after the storm. #watercolor #morninglight #painting

Last tuesday we went to Brighton for the day and I spent all of my money on clothes. Dad bought me a portable typewriter. On the pavements there, there were millions of LADYBIRDS.

An aerial view of a city, probably at ‘going home time’. It is Winter and it has been raining but there is a lot of hustle and bustle with cars and even a horse and cart which might date the picture to the late 1940s or 1950s

Other work by the Ladybird artists
‘Early Evening’
Artist: Ronald Lampitt
Magazine cover, 1948

Photo of four books lying in a square. Ian McMillan, My Sand Life, My Pebble Life. The Midnight Library, Matt Haig, Calling Barnsley by Helen Monks and Matt Woodhead of Lung Theatre. A Blue Plaque for Brian Glover by Ronnie Steele. With a Paddington bookmark to the side.

Not quite first sales of the day, a family who have been in Australia for 13+ years back on a family visit. A taste of home! A signed @imcmillan.bsky.social, My Sand Life My Pebble Life, Calling Barnsley from @lungtheatre.bsky.social, local writer Ronnie Steele, and a Matt Haig novel.

#booksky

👍

Fascinating schedule of learning for Christopher Marlowe at Cambridge University as detailed by Stephen Greenblatt in his book Dark Renaissance

Against a blue sky at sunset, the ‘Post Office Tower’ dominant with just a few tall buildings dotted against an expansive landscape

The modern world in old Ladybird books
London skyline, 1968

Artist: Robert Ayton
The story of Radio

The infinitive
Did the splits

I like this poem of the passage of time by Tess Gallagher from her 2019 @bloodaxebooks.bsky.social collection Is, Is Not

Sign in window says Karate Doesn’t Sleep

I hope you slept well. Karate didn’t need to.

From the Post Office’s 1934 “Outposts Of Britain” posters by the great Edward McKnight Kauffer. I’m not sure folks would warm to their homes being labelled as “outposts” today.But I do love the posters & how commercial art of the period characteristically incorporated quite radical designs elements.

Four lobby cards for 1966’s Batman movie.

@imcmillan.bsky.social

Reading, writing and thinking day today. Kettle on!

A small posy of blue & purple spring flowers in a cobalt blue Victorian ink bottle

I’ve just realised that the darkest ten weeks of the winter are behind us & just now we’re gaining 2 minutes of daylight each day here in the UK. A hopeful thought 🌿

POEM I wish that all my poems could be like the sky at night. The truth of the moment, without history. That, like the sky, they would yield at every moment all things, with all their stars. Not childhood, nor youth, nor age could rob them, or cast a spell on their immense beauty. A tremor, a flash, the music present and total. The tremor, the flash, the music in my head, The sky in my heart. The naked book!

Juan Ramón Jiménez, tr. Dennis Maloney

Infinity and a Bit by S. Reeson the fact remains you never know how much time is left to go on the extra loop you hope that could be yours causality discarded on the ground held memories both lost and found someone else’s warmup grants another opportunity to shine a couple of these lines into an end is a beginning is a mark even this early it is not too late the fact remains you never know let this be a symbol to start

Today’s #poetry #warmup inspired by @imcmillan.bsky.social posting a picture of a discarded rubber band, which settled in the shape of the symbol for infinity with a bit more on the left had side.

You don’t know how long there will be, so…

A woman in a black coat and knee-length boots with her back to the camera waits by a canal side. On the other bank are some traditional Dutch houses with lights on as it is now evening.

📸 | Untitled. Amsterdam, Netherlands (2025)
#EastCoastKin

With autumn leaves supporting the scene, here is a typical leafy semi-detached house, front gate ajar, with a grey wooden fence and a yellow H sign.

📸 | Balham, London (2025)
#FireHydrantFriday
#FeuerHydrantFreitag
#BouchedIncendieVendredi

after @richardmortimer.bsky.social
cc @colinfarmery.bsky.social

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (Anagrammed Lines)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight:

A warning said, the green knight
waits there — darkening, hanging.

The reigning king draws a thane.

Gawain, rearing, ends the knight.
(It knew! — gathers a grinning head....)

Oh yes

Rubber band art

Lorine Niedecker

Country diary: In my moment of loss, birds came like gifts | Amy-Jane Beer Ripon City Wetlands and Welburn, North Yorkshire: First a starling ​and then a robin​ arrived like visitations​. I am truly grateful for ​them both

Country diary: In my moment of loss, birds came like gifts | Amy-Jane Beer

Print in black and white showing figures shoveling snow off paths under skyscrapers

British-US printmaker Clare Leighton, Snow Shovellers, NewYork, 1929 #WomensArt

Berwick lighthouse, deep gloom. Oil washes on paper.

First cup of tea:
Civilisation’s
Momentary
Pinnacle

Cheers!

👍

Hi Richard; I’ve recently arrived in town.