Christopher Pittard
@christopherpittard
Academic, Course Leader in English Literature at University of Portsmouth (but posts are my own, mind). Victorian literature, detective fiction, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dickens, Wilkie Collins. Next book: *Arthur Conan Doyle* (Liverpool UP, 2028).
Bought @nicholasroyle.bsky.social's *Finders Keepers* and started reading it in the pub (pictured). Kept reading as I walked up Banbury Road, Oxford, just as it mentioned Banbury Road, Oxford A bit later (p.31) Oxfam St Giles is mentioned, which is the shop across the road in this picture. Help.
When you have all the right sections for your chapter but not necessarily in the right order.
A quick evening pint in the Lamb and Flag, which gets mentioned a few times in *The Moving Toyshop*.
Re-reading *Jude the Obscure*, and using my Penguin Classics copy from teenage years. This is, in fact, a 90s repackaging of the C. H. Sisson edition from 1978 and raises a few questions about explanatory notes...
The Latin Literature anthology used to belong to a Carol Ann Harding, as the book plate shows. A quick Google shows a surprising number of Carol Ann Hardings, none of whom seem a likely candidate.
The reference to Abu Dhabi is interesting because the book also features this print in Arabic script. Was the book bought there and ended up back nearer the wider family in Truro Tesco?
The Petronus has (to use @nicholasroyle.bsky.social's term) an interesting inclusion in the form of this postcard of St Agnes model village (which later became World in Miniature). Like Sarah, I have also been there.
Decent books for £1 in the charity stall at Tesco! My wife: "You're weird. Don't British boys complain about having to read that kind of thing at school?" Me: "I didn't go to that kind of school."
Though then we met this cat outside a seafood restaurant and the MR James mood was immediately lightened.
Everyone's talking about that error about Shabana Mahmood's height, but I remember that time the Guardian casually announced that Victorian schools used to execute their pupils.
Book shopping bonanza in Bodmin yesterday. All this for £7.
Perec's article on the organisation of personal book collections starts with the disclaimer that he doesn't mean academics' offices, and then a few pages later he brutally unleashes this.
Are you in Oxford? Do you like essays by Georges Perec? Then the remainders section at Blackwell's has a bargain for you.
The May fayre at St Mary's in Portsmouth is one of my fixed points in the year. I get to visit the Second Chance cats stall and update them on our cats; try out local beers in the beer tent; and pick up this book haul for a mere £2.50 for the lot. £2.50!
Also Beerwolf in Falmouth, which I always visit on my birthday.
On my walk home I noticed this property on Kent Road in Southsea is for sale (if you have a spare million hanging around). Previous owners include Arthur Conan Doyle.
We're coming up to the second anniversary of getting our cats (during the 2024 #WorldsnookerChampionship), and their first week in the house was essentially this:
There's always someone in the way #snooker #worldsnookerchampionship