John Self

@john-self.bsky.social

9440 Followers 366 Following

Book jockey

Two pages of tight, neat but hard to read handwriting in a spiral bound book. No changes or edits are visible.
The page from the Guardian with my article, surrounded by copies of BB’s novels. The rankings we can see are 10 Every Man for Himself 9 Harriet Said 8 Master Georgie 7 A Quiet Life 6 Sweet William 5 An Awfully Big Adventure 4 Injury Time 3 The Birthday Boys 2 The Bottle Factory Outing
Spanish pack of Camel cigarettes atop a piece of street furniture, with the warning picture showing a baby with a dummy in its mouth and a cigarette poking out of the centre of the dummy
Despite the evidence that so many of us find it annoying, we also appear hugely reluctant to actually do anything about it. Few official complaints are made. Even though I find loudcasting intensely grating, I have never registered an official complaint and have only occasionally asked other passengers to turn the volume down on their device.
Doc to shepherd: "So how did you two meet?" Shepherd: "Well it was late at night... I was trying to fall asleep... and then there she was." Sheep (standing on a box marked GYNECOLOGIST EXAM ROOM (SPECIAL CASE)): "Ewwwwwe!! You do realise that this won't look good on your CV, right?"
Email to me Warning: Proceed only if your funny bone is legally insured! > Inbox ... Greetings, Human! I have officially unleashed my new cartoon book, "Zinger Toonz: Dark n' Twisted," upon a completely unprepared society. I've attached the PDF below. It contains a level of beautifully unhinged humor guaranteed to make you laugh, snort beverage out of your nose, and deeply concern your therapist. If you don't re-examine both of our moral compasses by page 5, I haven't done my job. Wishing you endless giggles, questionable life choices, and maximum joy! Cheers, [name redacted] P.S. The attachment is right down there. Don't just stare at it like it's going to bite you... okay, maybe it will a little bit. Open it!
A pop up below my post telling me that it has been labelled ‘sexually suggestive’
Here's a cool idea! If someone dies and there is almost universal relief and joy, maybe do one second of research before becoming a moral scold. Think you could do that next time, champ? 13:38 • 4 Aug 2026 3 reposts 149 likes
BBC spokesman paying tribute to Rod Liddle, inc “Rod has left a substantial mark on the world of journalism.”
A car today with a CARTER / MONDALE bumper sticker
Once dismissed as trivial and trashy, romance fiction has surged in popularity in recent years, inspiring numerous sub-genres, including erotic romance and romantasy, each with their own fan base and clear set of rules.
Esther Rantzen probably saying “Unless, of course, you know different” on That’s Life!.
1977 Beryl Bainbridge Making a choice was very difficult - because it was this great prize of the world, one had to be very careful. Since I was published by Duckworth, it was very peculiar to have a Duckworth novel - Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood - included in the vote. I put my vote forward - for Blackwood - but the discussion on it lasted only about three minutes, because it was such a short book. So nobody was really interested in that. All I can remember of the final meeting is that I got terribly tired, I literally sank lower and lower under the table. Brendan Gill, who I thought was American, went towards the balcony saying he was going to throw himself off, he was so fed up. Philip Larkin was completely silent most of the time. Nobody dared say a word to him and he never said a word back. The only one who was in total control of everything was Robin Ray. He was so clever that we all went along with whatever he said, and he wanted Staying On by Paul Scott to win. Poor Scott was too ill to collect the prize. I've been shortlisted for the Booker five times and never won. I'm just very pleased to have been noticed.
bility increased a little. Honours continued to rain down on him (this year, on 1o February, he received the Coventry Award of Merit in the Guildhall, Coventry, but his good deeds weren't performed with any expectation of reward. He accepted that his fame required him to do such things, and although they often produced agonies of apprehension or torrents of scorn he always concealed in public what he felt in private. ('Don't they under-stand, he said behind the closed door of Newland Park, 'there already is a fucking Bard of Humberside?"6) His duties as Chairman of the Booker Prize Committee, which he also took up in the spring of 1977, were the most trying case in point. When invited to do the job, on 14 February, Monica remembers him "squir-ming' at the thought of having to read all the submissions (about fifty novels), turning up his nose at his fellow judges (Beryl Bainbridge, Brendan Gill, David Hughes and Robin Ray), dreading having to give a speech at the prize-giving dinner, and complaining about his fee. Eventually he suppressed all his doubts except those relating to payment. When a Chairman is appointed rather than elected primus inter pares,' he told the organizers of the prize, I should half expect the Chairman to receive more than the others, in token of the fact that he has an additional responsi-bility. "8 His fee was duly raised from £500 to £650. By November, after a long summer's reading, a holiday in Scotland *laden with novels'," and two meetings of the Committee (which were 'characterized by the greatest good humour'4°), Larkin had drawn up his own short-list: The Road to Lichfield by Penelope Lively, Staying On by Paul Scott, Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym, Before the Crying Ends by John L. Hughes, Johnny I Hardly Knew You by Edna O'Brien, and An Ideal Friend by Madeleine Riley. (Lively, Scott and Pym made it to the short-list agreed with the other judges; the remaining three short-listed titles were by Paul Bailey, Caroline Blackwood and Je…
Larkin, pen in mouth, surrounded by books at a desk
Opinion UK politics There is no modern-day Maggie to save Britain from Burnhamism The right hopes that Labour's new leader will fail, but who exactly is going to step in and shake things up? ROBERT SHRIMSLEY
People Like That - The Collected Stories
Google Maps route showing the short distance from 68 Elm Park Gardens, Chelsea (where Brookner lived) to Elm Park Mansions (where Henry Root and his creator William Donaldson) lived
The article in today’s Guardian, covered in part with a copy of Dazai’s Schoolgirl (Penguin Classics)
The Really Important File By Nicholas Brewer A humble government employee is just doing his job when he notices something out of the ordinary: a really important file. The new heart-pounding spy thriller from genre master Nicholas Brewer will have readers asking themselves: What's he gonna do with that file?
Wen Zhenheng, Treatise on Superfluous Things Cover shows a detail from a portrait of the painter Wang Shimin (1592-1680) as a young man, by the Chinese Ming Dynasty painter Zheng Jing (1616)
We split bills equally even when one of us earned a lot more
Person pulling open tissue paper to reveal three pairs of pants
More than 60,000 released under 'temporary' Labour scheme By Lucy Gilder A total of 60,108 prisoners were released under the government's early release scheme between September 2024 and December 2025, according to the latest Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures.
Window of a cheesecake shop which has a large cartoon figure of a man in the window (shades of Alan Carr) who is wearing an apron and nothing else, so you can see his bare backside (in profile). He is saying “fill your bake* with a cheesecake”. * Belfast slang for mouth or face
Headline: Ukrainian drones hit Russian online giant retailer Wildberries for second time
Fry: Uh, 80,000 years? Leela: No! One week! Fry: Damn. I knew you wouldn’t have asked unless it was really high or really low.
Lionel Hutz's business card. Works on contingency? No, money down!
Reply to the football tweet saying “Nah, little kids playing sports should be about fun only, not winning. Don't even keep score.” 19:43 • 21 Jul 2026
Delna Meyer Follows you @delnameyer.bsky.social 16 followers 469 following 32 posts After 6 years of living in the West, my worldview and sense of self evolved further than I expected. Today's challenges cannot be met with yesterday's prescriptions. Reading John Redwood with more interest than my younger self would've thought possible.
Tweet: I think the thing I resent most about gen Al- and this is a selfish thing to say but it's true- is that it's put an asterix on my sense of wonder. What I mean is that now when I see an amazing or beautiful image I can't have that initial "wow!" reaction. I doubt. I have to verify. I hate it. 02:55 • 21 Jul 2026
Headline: Burnham offers 'positivity' but sacks 11 cabinet ministers
Nicholas Mosley’s Hopeful Monsters, 1991 Minerva paperback. White cover, gold text, image by Steve Martin of a lizard in a tank with some abstract shapes behind it.
The two-buttons meme with Spain and Argentina on the buttons
When Mr Hardy fell ill, after a lifetime of inertia, cogitation and smoking, Christine was devotedly at his bedside, thinking that at last, now that they were allowed to be together without much interference from Mrs Hardy (who, for all her hospital training, preferred to make herself scarce) they might be
Digestive Jaffa Cakes. Let me just repeat that. DIGESTIVE JAFFA CAKES. Exactly.
Claudia Winkelman quits chat show after one series
The middle of a residential road
Prince Philip in a car on his way home from hospital, looking dead
Weather forecast for the week ahead showing thunder, rain and cloud
Long range forecast Thursday 16 Jul to Saturday 25 Jul A change in weather pattern is likely at the start of this period, with the preceding dry and sunny weather breaking down into a more unsettled spell. This means an increasing chance of showers by Thursday and into the following weekend. Some heavy and thundery showers are likely, particularly across the south of the UK. Into the following week, conditions will likely remain changeable with showers or longer spells of rain at times, perhaps heavy and thundery in places. Temperatures are likely to be above normal.