Great slow reading with people of Xenia / Zeus’ law in The Odyssey @porticolibrary.bsky.social yesterdays. And a treat to look at and talk about Chapman’s Homer. Thanks all for coming!

Sunday worship complete. Just going to say I’d watch it again straightaway.

It is happening #theodyssey

The obsession with Homer & the #odyssey is nothing new. A 19thC Prime Minister wrote volumes on Homer, arguing that the epics were based on fact. This was one of his pretty volumes. Find out more @porticolibrary.bsky.social www.theportico.org.uk/event-calend...

Just been to Naples archaeological museum and seen the real sculpture. Now I’m a bit queasy. 😫

There is a theme for this weekend. @0tralala.bsky.social has never been to Pompeii so his family are taking him.

New treat book after the past busy weeks.

New @northernballet.bsky.social production of Gentleman Jack was stunning. Sensual story telling and captured gendered violence through dance. Best of all the chorus of words. The joy & agony of writing in set and movement

So tired - need empowerment earring with William Morris today

Amazing performance by @stepheharrop.bsky.social tonight w books by the men who wrote Cressida’s story in Britain - Chaucer (pictured), Shakespeare & Henryson (not heard of latter either). Stephe wove migrant & outsider stories of women together with the myth 🙌 @porticolibrary.bsky.social

Lovely stretch with themed yoga around love in May - rescheduled as too hot last week - with poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning @porticolibrary.bsky.social Earlier ran slow reading on Robert Browning - one of fav poets - in Italy. A lot of laughter, admiration and profound respect.

Lying in bed after a massive menopause reflux / shakes / flush first thing & thinking how did women do this in the past. Were we all just ‘eccentric’? Yesterday paid respects to Meg Shelton, a supposed witch, who was buried upside down with a rock to stop her escaping. Tempted to remove the rock!

Keeping cool @porticolibrary.bsky.social. Dignity, always dignity.

Reading this for my counselling course and was thinking Sisyphus 🤔

Reading Carl Rogers directly for first time and seeing all kinds of parallels (& rebuttals) of Foucault when comes to power dynamics. Honestly feel like I’ve found a thinker who helps think through my unease with hierarchies & the radical nature of centring people.

Surreptitiously pushing a glass of beer away from 1850 Household Words & 1870 short stories by Elizabeth Gaskell at Haunted Book Club live last night @porticolibrary.bsky.social. Perfectly sums up that medium ground between access & preservation 🤣.

My professional career in libraries / heritage in 2 photos: how I present & how I am.

Look at this rather lovely display on Pandora’s jar which uses a Greek pythos to throw back sorrows in and walls on which to pin up hopes. Hellenic Museum Melbourne. Feel like I’m @alexpodyssey.bsky.social roving reporter but this really made me think again about that Podyssey episode.

One chapter in and seriously enjoying @davidwengrow.bsky.social and David Graeber’s The Dawnof Everything. Much underlining going on.

Almost 10 & it’s been birthday weekend for the lady. When she was annoying me in the hot tub, I said ‘remember I was in labour with you for 3 days’ The sass pot replied ‘And remember, I don’t care!’ 🤷🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤣

Yoga with sonnets for #Shakespeare Day @porticolibrary.bsky.social Gorgeous.

Thought you had enough bulls - think again! Live (almost) from the Museum of Anatolian Civilisation in Ankara - bulls from 6,000 BCE & a millennia or so later & a goddess riding a bull.

Guess which myth for @alexpodyssey.bsky.social am reading for?

Spot the photo of my giving a talk with my eyes open? Nope. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Women hidden in print tour tonight @porticolibrary.bsky.social . #womenhistorymonth

On #WorldBookDay lady becomes Elizabeth Bennet & I embrace my inner Poe, again.

Went to ENO’s Cosi Fan Tutti at Bridgewater Hall. Seemed rather apt given the new @alexpodyssey.bsky.social episode on Pandora, & discussing all the misogyny that telling that story entails. The music sublime. And with my bf - we used to go to eno as our treat & now she is an exec director of it.

Looking forward to speaking to @alexpodyssey.bsky.social followers this Thursday on Prometheus. Here is the first illustrated edition of Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus from @porticolibrary.bsky.social. Thinking about Prometheus has also made me think about Frankenstein.

The end of the book is nigh.

How to name a Dalek in Linnaean style (aka with some Greek) courtesy of @davehone.bsky.social with the help of @alexpodyssey.bsky.social. It amuses so much that political commentator @sturdyalex.bsky.social is now dr who canon. 🤣🤣🤣

Lovely photo of our yoga class at the end of their practice today @porticolibrary.bsky.social. Taking inspiration from Christina Rossetti to get through January, got out a beautiful book published posthumously - sketch of her by her brother Dante Gabriel & edited by other brother William Michael.