Andrew Frayn

@afrayn.bsky.social

2272 Followers 867 Following

Academic. Work on First World War literature (Assoc Ed., FWW Studies); modernist studies (former BAMS Chair); noncanonical literature; rural modernity; late style. Grumbles my own.

A yellow price reduction sticker, reading "was: deranged"
The door to a polling station. All the parties' posters are to the left of the door except Reform UK, which is to the right. The Reform UK logo is a right-pointing arrow, so it appears to point away from the door.
An Edinburgh Napier University branded sticker with the slogan "Education needs Educators". The sticker is white with a gold border and blue text. Stylised images of glasses and an open book are at the bottom of the sticker.
The other thing that I was talking to the theatre manager about is this new fad for instant everything: the thing novel, the short play, the tiny epic. Eventually, if we're not careful, all our arts will be down to the length of a commercial, because people actually can't sit and [...]
When Laura took The Times Literary Supplement to school, Gilda had scornfully said: "Men don't like girls who read papers like that," and it was true of Camperlea men, if of no others. Yet the library, a dark toast-rack of battered, grimy books, had once been Laura's refuge and the fortress of her early imaginings.
An A5 sized diary in mint green with 2026-2027 in silver to the top right. On a white background.
The lower half of a man, wearing a purple jumper and pale blue jeans, sitting at a table on a British train. On the table is a glasses case, on top of a book titled "The Men's Health Big Book of Exercises". A pen is clipped into the book a tiny way through it.
A kerbed low island filled with concrete in a car park with a lamppost coming out of it. Part of the curved kerb has broken loose and has been replaced inside out. Two other fragments placed haphazardly don't appear to match. There is green discolouration around the very faded grey lamppost, and moss and lichen are growing elsewhere on the concrete.
An email in a Gmail inbox, subject line "Photo booth query", whose sender appears as "ICE helpdesk"
A graffito in yellow, on grey concrete, as an acrostic: All Cats Are Beautiful
A picture of a man in a dark blue short-sleeved shirt reclining at a 1960s recording console. The caption is "Steve Cropper, 1966", and the credit is Charles Olde.
The hardback dustjacket front cover of Robert Gordon's Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion. Two black men (Sam & Dave) in sharp suits are clicking their fingers.
A circular label, with black text and border on gold background. It reads "Do not chill". It is on a supermarket basil plant.
A stone faced building with large windows, with a Christmas tree in the second top left, and a Christmas star in the far top right.
Edwyn Collins seated, singing, in front of his band, and the Edwyn backdrop in Elvis 1968 style. The photo is taken from the venue balcony looking down.
A seated Edwyn Collins, singing next to his son, standing, in front of his band. The backdrop says "Edwyn", in the style of the Elvis Comeback Show backdrop.
A view down a suburban road. The Forth Bridge is visible in the distance over the modern housing, under leaden grey skies.
The minaret next to the Thessaloniki rotunda, which at times has been a Muslim and Christian faith space. The minaret is pale white against a clear blue sky. The Rotunda, only part of which is shown in the photo, is built of red tile and stone.
A war cemetery consisting of rows of pale stone crosses either side of a wide, paved central walkway, with perpendicular paved areas between rows of crosses either side. Large conifers (or similar evergreen trees) divide the cemetery from bright blue skies with just a hint of cloud.
A busy conference room, with a panel of three presenters at the front.
7. Councillors' Reports SN - Relations with the owner of Bark Park remains strained, however the owner did remove a doll with its eyes gouged out.
A box of Tesco cocktail sticks. The small print says (c) Tesco 2005.
A plush puppet of William Shakespeare, in purple and black but with an additional pale yellow tutu, sitting on a windowsill.
A letter from Kenneth Tynan to Julian Holland of 1 July 1947. Tynan writes: "Have been offered a permanent job at Windsor Rep on strength of my Holofernes in OUDS - Coghill advises me not to take it, and the Windsor man in a kind letter agrees to hold the job till next year - there may be a Chair of Drama at Oxford in five years time and I'd I get a good degree Coghill says he will get me a lectureship". [Tynan was 20.]
A very busy Royal Mile in Edinburgh on the first weekend of the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe.
Street bins in front of graffiti on the wall of a rundown warehouse building. The central graffito says, in clear letters, Free Palestine.
A performer pass for the Stand a Comedy Club during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, for Andrew Frayn for the public engagement series Provocateurs.
Part of the Wikipedia page for R. F. Kuang's forthcoming novel, Katabasis. Background: Kuang's sixth novel, Katabasis was announced to the public during her promotional cycle for Yellowface in 2023. Kuang wrote it while enrolled as a PhD student in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale University and while planning her wedding. She stated that the idea for the book came out of a "cute, silly" idea about how "academia is hell" before seriously realizing, "Oh, no, academia is hell." Synopsis: The novel follows two doctoral candidates who must venture into Hell in order to save their thesis advisor in order to get letters of recommendation.
An empty bottle of Whyte & Mackay on a metal railway station seat.
A twilight view of the Scott Monument from Waverley Bridge in Edinburgh.
The masthead of a local freesheet called Diary Newsletter.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe catalogue listing for the show 'The Provocateurs: Forensic Jewellery / Don't Read the Classics!'
A Google Maps card for a business called "Brexit Electrical Services. Ltd". The image is of a small black car and some terraced houses.
A mixtape cassette with a range of classic rock (Hendrix, Jam, Echo and the Bunnymen, etc) and middling 1990s indie (Mover, Shed Seven, Hoffman, Urusei Yatsura, etc).
A bald, shaven-headed man in a green jumper, taking a selfie in a mirror while holding and looking quizzically at a soft puppet of William Shakespeare.
"The Labour movement in England is being ruined under my eyes by parliamentary and municipal politics. Both leaders and masses are only waiting for elections, and, while preparing for the election campaign, quite forgetting the socialist work. Nay, they totally suppress all socialist propaganda in order not to frighten the electors. [...]"
A poster, partly scratched from a lamppost, with the slogan "Their wars our dead", above a stylised image of workers raising the fist. The slogan below is "Sir! No sir!" A web address which suggests it is posted by a communist group is too damaged to work out.
The title page for Peril in Lakeland, by Winifred Finlay. The facing page is an illustration of an oldish man against a Lake District backdrop, in a grey tweed suit carrying a staff.
Headline for a Guardian Opinion piece by Adrian Chiles: "I have lost all faith in zips." His profile picture is bottom right.
A 1980s advert for the Acorn Electron computer.
Card CD case for a "Completely free 45 day trial of AOL and the Internet."
The anime butterfly meme, headed academics:, with the question "is this an archive?" An image of Santa replaces the butterfly and is captioned "anything".
A just more than half moon above the tips of a suburban skyline, roofs and bare treetops.
A WhatsApp thread. The first image shows a cover of John McGrath's play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil, with the caption "Novel" in title case. The second image shows a cover od Luis Cernuda's poetry collection Forbidden Pleasures, with the caption "NOVEL" in all caps.
An A4 paper sign on a table, on which the first item says "Snowflake Decoration £1". The table is branded for Edinburgh Open Workshop and a decoration is shown.
A bare tree against a lightly clouded bright blue sky. It looks cold.
A photo with twilight sky looking south down Edinburgh's George IV Bridge, from outside the National Library of Scotland. Large stone buildings.line the street.
A device with prongs coming out of it, branded Fourns trimpot (sic)
Cover of a programme for a Mediaeval Jousting event at Floors Castle, Kelso. Black type on yellow ground, an image of a mediaeval knight on horseback and a target on the left half of the page.
Graffiti which reads "If my life was a book it would be written in your handwriting". It is on red paint, which has dripped, looking a little like blood, on a white background. A cartoon of Homer Simpson in the same paint is to the bottom right.
A collection of images, photocopied text and slogans about the darts player Jocky Wilson, gaffer taped to the white-painted brick wall of a pedestrian underpass
A pile of autumn leaves blown on a tarmac road into a stylised fish shape
A Duolingo screen translating into Spanish the phrase "We don't have financial problems".
A lightly clouded bright blue sky looking across a Scottish loch, with forestry on either side and a wind farm in the far distance
A stack of books: Kenneth Womack, Living the Beatles Legend; Robin Jenkins, Poor Angus; Peter Hudis, Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades; Elizabeth Taylor, Angel; Ronald Frame, The Lantern Bearers; Graham Swift, Shuttlecock; Miki Berenyi, Fingers Crossed; Joe Boyd, White Bicycles.
Monday 24 November. as I was reading history this afternoon, I thought: 'I am 46. On the decline. Why fill my head with knowledge?' An absurd reflection, but it passed several times through my mind.'
A how it started, how it's going meme. Two identical pics of Andy Murray