Victoria Stewart

@verbivorial

When not reading, often writing. Represented by @litagentfran.bsky.social

300 Following436 Followers851 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and verbivorial.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· 20d

Civic pride at St George's Hall

Detail from a tiled floor with a Liver bird in a roundel and the motto "deus nobis haec otia fecit" in some banners on either side (except the "haec" is hidden by some marble edging)

Above an organ, a semicircular stained glass window, showing Neptune, wearing pants that appear to made of seaweed, and a merman blowing a conch, either side of a Liver bird emblem. In the background, the sea and sky.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Jul 13

RIP Sam Neill

Sam Neill in Reilly, Ace of Spies, looking brooding.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Jul 2

Enjoyed Jodie Foster’s turn as a paranoid (or is she?) psychoanalyst in A Private Life

Jodie Foster looking anxiously round a curtain in A Private Life

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Jun 23

These chimney pots where I'm staying don't look like they're enjoying the weather either.

A row of old chimney pots, with holes that look like eyes and wavy-edged covers that look a bit like hats.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· May 30

They cleared out the flat over the undertakers and left this short story prompt

Picture of a bright yellow skip containing old doors, cardboard, scraps of wallpaper, and a suitcase with a label stuck on the side of it

Close up of the label, which is curling at the corners and says "Southern Railways from Charing Cross to Dover Priory"

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· May 16

Exciting delivery today from @carnyxpress.co.uk!

My contributor copies of Oaths and Offerings, an anthology of stories on folkloric themes published by Carnyx Press. It has a very pretty cover with a design of plant and animal motifs

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· May 11

Not quite on that level, but I keep thinking about it and giggling at inappropriate moments:

A boy with a turkey on his head walks along the pavement and is about to pass an angry bear. Caption: “Whoa, looks like I picked the wrong day to wear a turkey as a hat and a piece of bacon as a tie.”

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· May 11

My favourite wartime advertising genre is “ads reminding you about the existence of products that aren’t currently available”

Line drawing of a soda siphon with the caption: Here’s to the day when the siphons again say “Sss..ch…weppe..ss”. The final word is positioned coming out of the siphon.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· May 9

I had an office on the 13th floor of this one during a period that included the replacement of the windows and the demise of the pater noster lift

The Attenborough Tower, University of Leicester - eighteen concrete floors with shiny windows.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Apr 23

I liked this bit

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Apr 17

In sunny West Kirby, looking forward to "An Evening With Gwendoline Riley"

Rail of the prom with sea and a sunny sky beyond

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Apr 14

Lots to like about Ozon's The Stranger - including unexpected cameo from Swann Arlaud

Benjamin Voison as Meursault in The Stranger - black and white image of a handsome young man in an open-necked shirt standing on a beach with the sea and sky in the background.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Mar 23

I have some of those! In a frilly variety

Green hellebore - green leaves and green flowers with curly petals

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Mar 22

I like her proto-flash fiction

Marjorie Bowen, The Accident
Murchison was amazed at the speed with which he escaped from the flaming car, across the common, for he could see now the red blaze on the lonely road in the distance: they were fools to row, he and Bargrave, and send the cursed vehicle over like that; he had not ceased running since he had felt the first shock of the released fire from the wreckage.
He wondered why they had quarrelled: the fright had seared his memory; but he certainly knew he loathed Bargrave; the landscape was oddly dim, like the dimness of an eclipse
Murchison, still fleeing, suddenly saw Bargrave in front of him, also hurrying- an attenuated, grey wisp of a Bargrave, blown thin by the forlorn breeze.
Murchison yelled in triumph
“So you were killed, you silly fool!”
“Do you think you’re alive?” jeered the ghost of Bargrave. Then Murchison
knew that he also had no body and that the red flames were not the blaze of the
burning car but the light of their future destination.

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Mar 20

I had a Saturday job at this one when in sixth form. My fave task was “shelf-tidying” - making sure stock was in alphabetical/Dewey order - and thus I came across Andrew Boyle’s Climate of Treason, a biog of Giles and Esmond Romilly, all sorts of interesting bits and pieces.

College Road Carnegie library, Crosby - small and red brick with a cute clock tower and cupolas. Closed for many years, but a listed building, now on its way to being a coffee shop...

Victoria Stewart@verbivorial· Mar 8

Went in early for International Women’s Day - very engaging recital by Soraya Vergee of works by female composers @thetungauditorium.bsky.social last Wednesday