Alison

@finger-post

I write about the Franklin Expedition and the people who searched for them. I also enjoy petting cats in Victorian cemeteries. Humanitarian. Sea lawyer. She/They. #MDANT. #NUJ. #NoTerfs.

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Alison@finger-post· 14d

What's your sign?

Image shows a sign on an elevator in a brewery. It reads "This lift is for cargo only. NO MAN-RIDING under any circumstances."

Alison@finger-post· 14d

I have libearated this guy from a colleague’s desk because he deserves a little holiday.

Image shows a little plastic toy Polar Bear 🐻‍❄️ . It is sitting on a pink post-it note on which someone has written “IOU 1 (one) Bear”.

Alison@finger-post· 18d

The dying of the light.

Image has been taken from a plane. It shows the Channel of Esk - Gretna is just off to the right - looking towards the Solway Firth. The light is fading, and so one half of the water is silver while the other is kinda gloomy.

Edinburgh's three bridges taken as the light was entirely fading. The water is silver and the skies are a bit Iain M. Banks.

Alison@finger-post· 22d

Go home, Cessna. You’re drunk.

Image is a screenshot from the FlightRadar game SkyCards. It shows a Cessna 182 south of Perth in Western Australia. However, the flight information indicates that the plane originated in Cork, Ireland (>15,000km away) and is heading for Winnipeg, Canada (>16,000km away). I hope they have snacks.

Alison@finger-post· 23d

Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness.

Image is the artwork from Julian Simpson's audio drama Mythos: The Village. It shows two women, both dressed in black. One is wearing shades and holding a gun. The other is wearing a Victorian gown and has her hands on her hips. They look a lot like Phoebe Fox and Nicola Walker.

Alison@finger-post· Jul 12

Calling dirty gofficks and associated spooky types of this (UK) parish: TK Maxx is already putting Hallowe’en tat out on the shelves.

Image is of a candle holder in the form of an adorable little ghost, which is clearly going ooOOOoooOOOooo.

Alison@finger-post· Jul 12

Them: Oh and you’ll need a pair of rubber boots. Me: Pretty sure I have some already. Them: … Them: Not like that.

Image shows a pair of black rubber boots, like riding boots only with chains and a bit of a heel.

Alison@finger-post· Jul 10

I mean this makes me very romantically excited and I think it's truly remarkable.

Image shows a white man of a certain age, dressed in various shades of tan and brown, holding up a romantic fossil.

Alison@finger-post· Jul 5

This is a brilliant cat, but why are they cosplaying James Clark Ross?

Commander James Clark Ross J R Wildman, 1834. National Maritime Museum. The portrait that launched a thousand ships.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 27

Would have saved a lot of trouble, not to mention entire forests of tedious paperwork.

Image is That Bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Arthur, King of the Britons, addresses his knights. The text reads: "On 2nd thought, let's not go up the Wellington Channel. It is a silly place."

Alison@finger-post· Jun 27

And some ducks, too! I /think/ this is a tufted duck? But please correct me. This is not an area in which I have all my ducks in a row.

Image shows a beautiful adult suck with dark plumage and bright eyes. She is swimming in water that looks luridly green - I promise it's not some sort of reflecting pool - with two ridiculous little black puffs of duckling.

A ridiculous little black puff of duckling.

The goth duck and her brood were swimming directly towards a mallard and her set of adorable little floofs. I thought it was going to go a bit Camperdown/Victoria for a while, but these birds are way smarter than that.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 27

Birb time! Have some geese of various sizes and terror levels.

Image shows a female Egyptian Goose, with cream and brown plumage and very pink legs. She's keeping a very close watch with those startling orange eyes.

Image shows six goslings with fluffy brown and white plumage and silly little khaki legs. Five a pecking at the ground, while one is standing up and looking ahead.

Image shows Mama Goose and the Ridiculous Goslings*, with the little'uns pecking away merrily and the magnificent mum poised to rain squawky death down onto anything that bothers them.

*I saw this band supporting Mogwai at The Garage in 2009.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 26

Absolute scenes in 1862. #NavalHistory

Image shows the bottom of a letter from 1862, under which a contemporary annotator has written “The ‘new-fangled’ Ironclads were in great disfavour.”

Alison@finger-post· Jun 26

Well…

Alison@finger-post· Jun 25

The Central Line during a heatwave.

Image shows a cute copy of Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World. It is being read on a Central Line train.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 23

In 1893, Dr Harry Goodsir Mackid carried on a family tradition of scientific innovation by becoming the first person in Calgary AB to mount a flatscreen television on the wall.

Image is a silver gelatine print from 1893. It shows a slightly startled looking white man with dark hair and an impressive moustache. He is sitting in a room which is notable for the taxidermic head of a snarling wolf on the wall to his left. Next to that is some form of wall hanging which looks a little bit like a big telly.

Harry Goodsir Mackid was born in Ontario in 1858. He was the cousin of THAT Harry Goodsir, the one who was lost with the Franklin Expedition.

https://collections.musee-mccord-stewart.ca/en/objects/158347/dr-harry-g-mackid-calgary-alb-1893

Alison@finger-post· Jun 22

I’m Scots and Irish and therefore anything over about 18C falls into this category tbh. #TapsAff

Screengrab of a weather alert, announcing a Red Warning for high temperature posing an “extraordinary threat to life or property”.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 18

Delighted to find two old friends and one new unworn one: I guess it was a bit much, even for me, and even during Inappropriate T-Shirt Week.

A black t-shirt with a yellow design. It reads Disaster Area Sundive Tour. The design is of a very black spaceship heading directly for a yellow sun.

A black t-shirt with a russet and cream depiction of Dorothy Parker and her quote “I’ve been too fucking busy or vice versa”.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 15

Someone is playing the bagpipes.

Image is a New Yorker cartoon showing a pit full of the screaming damned, all writhing with horror. Satan is on a throne on a raised platform. He is telling a kilted man with bagpipes: "You'll be in charge of the music down here."

Alison@finger-post· Jun 14

In an agony of indecision about which book to read yesterday, I grabbed John Pebble's The High Girders at random. Every par is a banger, like this one: the scene inside a signal cabin on 28 Dec 1879, when the Tay Rail Bridge collapsed in a storm, taking a passenger train with it.

"Watt and Barclay looked at each other and did not know what to do, or how to say what they were thinking. Then, because they felt alone in this box of light, and because they could not imagine what had happened outside in the darkness, they opened the door and ran down the steps. They stood on the boarding and the wind tore at them."

Alison@finger-post· Jun 7

Colleague: I love that you are so into archives and things, that's cool, but I'm too active, I couldn't do that. My watch at close of play Friday (travel, two archives, collecting Stuff, drinks, change of time zones adding +1hr to all this):

Image shows an Apple Watch indicating that the wearer has been on their feets for 21 hours. It was actually 22 hours, because I also skipped back an hour because time zones.

I refer to in-person work in archives as "shoe leather work" for a reason.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 6

What can I say, big brown eyes and strawberry blond hair are something of a weakness chez Fairchild.

Oil painting of Alexander McDonald of Laurencekirk, surgeon, lost with Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition. Image: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Presented by Mrs A N Dew, 2007.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 6

Met a beautiful boy with big brown eyes and strawberry blond hair and he’s everything I ever wanted and also look at what’s going on with his feets.

Image shows a beautiful golden spaniel with ridiculous ears and the softest fur. His name is Blaine and he’s a Very Good Dog.

Blaine sitting splootily on the floor of a bar. He is being very patient. His paws are huge and fluffy and should be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 2

Fascinating to see this CDV turn up in alerts: poor doomed Hugh Talbot Burgoyne of HMS Captain and some of his poor doomed officers and crew, not long before the Royal Navy learned a valuable lesson about reduced freeboards and a ship's centre of gravity. #NavalHistory

Image shows a carte de visite photograph c.1870, showing several Royal Navy officers seated and standing. They all look enormously glum, and well they might, because they are on the Cowper Phipps Coles-designed HMS Captain.

Alison@finger-post· Jun 2

My last words are highly likely to be "but that is a perfectly cromulent word, you total and utter numpties".

A screenshot from a document, showing the words "within and outwith", with the latter word inexplicably underlined to indicate that it's somehow not a real word when it totally is a real word.

Alison@finger-post· May 29

Tadateru Konoé of Japan, our former President, died a few days ago. I had the pleasure and the honour of being his speechwriter. He was elegant and gentle in person. This is my favourite of the many pics I took of him: we are reflected on the engine of a German Red Cross rescue boat, on the Spree.

Image shows three people reflected on the engine of a boat.

Alison@finger-post· May 15

L: Goth Spray R: Bear Spray

Alison@finger-post· May 5

Today, 5 May, is the National Day of awareness and remembrance for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people.

Image shows red dresses hanging from a building. There is a white fence with red ribbons on it, and a sign saying “Red is the only colour spirits can see.”

Image shows red dresses hanging from a building. There is a sign commemorating the national day of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and 2SLGBTQQI+ People.

Alison@finger-post· May 4

The sheer joy of seeing three (3) Stripey Condors today. This one has no affiliation with any football teams in Glasgow btw. #SkyCards #Nerd

Image shows one of Condor’s wonderful stripey planes just hanging out at an airport.

Alison@finger-post· May 4

Today is my dad's birthday. He's not around to celebrate it, but it's important that you all see how well a mechanic from Lanarkshire could scrub up when he needed to. Love you, Bob.