The shelf I keep my own books on isn't tall enough for hardbacks, which isn't helping with the storage situation. Can't use the top of the shelves, that's the overflow library book storage. Might need to get some larger shelves for this space; these are a remnant of an old flat with sloping eaves.

It's 4.5 years since I read it and this chapter opener has stuck in my head ever since because of how complete an impression it gives me of these people. Like oh yeah I know exactly who you mean

Never thought I'd relate to a Middle Irish noun

It's the French release day for THE WOLF AND HIS KING! (I think? Idk, nobody tells me anything.) I intended to make a Serious Video showing you the book, but the heatwave is getting to me, so I made this incoherent mess instead. Hopefully the book speaks for itself:

Mind you, ParcelForce wants to charge me £10,000, and they won't even print the label for me

Níl mé abalta é a úsaid ar mo tháibléad :( Is Android é ach b'fhéidir an Android mícheart. Fón amháin!

This is the alternative to being on benefits, but applying for this scheme requires evidence. I don't have any of the first half. The latter half has to be "recent", which elsewhere they say is within 6 months. I have a chronic condition diagnosed in 2012. It costs money to obtain new letters.

And the reason I would have to pay for specific recent letters is that "it's too easy to fake" other letters. For an organisation supposedly run by disabled people they sure are buying into the same bullshit everyone else pulls on us

Instead of writing the word "súil" (eye), they've drawn an eyeball. But they've made sure to include the fadas and lenition. That's right. They've lenited the eyeballs. (RIA 23 B 21)

Côr Meibion Tafarn y Maypole, Caergrawnt 😅 (The Welsh takeover of the Sunday night session at The Maypole in Cambridge continues.)

The great thing about getting up at 4am is that after you get home at 9.30 you can fit in two naps before lunchtime.

Castle Mound, Cambridge, 4.54am / 5.40am

You're welcome.

Another year, another May morning playing for the dancers as we brought up the sun for the first day of summer.

Quite a few years ago, one of my group chats wilfully misinterpreted this (already misleading) line from Alfred Nutt's "Cuchulainn: The Irish Achilles" (1900) to mean that Lug has an MA, and it's been a running joke ever since. There's a spiritual degree for you

That does sound lovely, minus the pollen! It's not too bad for me yet; grass is the real killer for me and unfortunately Cambridge grass pollen levels look like this :') At least I'm away for a week in June, somewhere less low-lying and landlocked, so I might get a reprieve.

In this variant of Comrac Fir Diad that I'm translating, Medb appears to say that Cú Chulainn's *mother* was one of the Túatha Dé Danann. Now that's a new one on me. "A mathoir"? An bhfuil tú cinnte, a Mheadhbh?

Sent three minutes before I finally found it:

As we all know, usefulness of academic books can be directly measured by the number of index tabs applied while reading them. Might be another 6 months before I've finished typing all of this up.

"Here the sunlight settled on ferns and gorse and the needle-strewn track one beast or another wore in the unceasing fight for endurance..."

"The paths were not true paths, a wanderer would quickly learn, only the echo of animal feet, making their winding way towards the sky with no respect for human limits..."

I knew there'd be a use for this eventually (though I might want to line/back it with something)

I'm not sure my diagrammed version from last year really clears too much up but it did mean I had fewer abbreviations to keep track of.

Really not grasping the "this is weird and creepy behaviour regardless of who the picture is of" part, are they Don't use somebody else's headshot, which is both of their face and also a pro photo © the photographer, as your profile picture. Regardless of who they are. Hello!!!

"sguirim ⁊ mé ag tuitim im chodladh" I write and I am falling asleep (possibly "and" here meaning when/while)

I think this is my favourite. Just being like "okay I'm tired of this poem now. Too long. Lemme go to bed"

The additional artwork is by Tom Roberts, who also did the cover art! :)

It's a weird time to be trying to release a book in the US for the first time, but I guess we all need some medieval werewolves and queer yearning amidst The Horrors? Anyway, it's only a week until THE WOLF AND HIS KING comes out in North America, and the NA edition is VERY pretty:

Me trying to understand the hypothetical source relationship between the surviving first recension in Lebor na hUidre and the second in the Book of Leinster and Stowe