Dr Andrew McInnes

@drbeard79.bsky.social

4637 Followers 4083 Following

Hopeless Romanticist, childless cat dad, and coffee addict (he/him) Solving real word problems

An advert playing mid way through The Hebrides Overture in my PowerPoint
A TV tuned to Radio 3 on BBC Sounds reading Proms Countdown with blue and yellow instruments in deco style against a blue background - the great crested grebe has just been tweet of the day
Hazel our calico kitten in a long thin box, the perfect size for her!
A big blue note book (general Brontë notes), a Vienna notebook with old fashioned poster style image of the Vienna Opera (the Emily one I thought I’d lost but it was in the stack of books kept next to my toaster), a Vent for Change reddish notebook (for my P J Harvey article and John Keats Getting It On a Grecian Urn piece), an orange-y kenji notebook (last year’s makeshift academic diary), a fluffy blue notebook with a fried egg sewn into it with a happy face in the yolk and egg-cellent ideas in the white (currently empty)
An advert for an Abodi handbag featuring a woman in red lying down clutching a black bag surrounded by black cats against et a green background apparently in Transylvania
A literal flock of geese on the lawn outside our swanky library building
The silhouette of my hands and phone taking a photo of a raised pond of water lillies with pops of yellow and the water mostly covered with green lily leaves
A cartoon of Mary Shelley holding a quill pen surrounded by stars Ruth the tag line Bysshe, please
Three cannoli in a box from the weekends gingerbread festival
A little Robin fledgling (to the right) fascinated by our BBQ (left)
A mural in Bradford reading BREATHE BREATHE BREATHE In black red grey brown and turquoise
The beautiful cover of Foes & Cons in big yellow letters against a blue background with Charlie Chamberlain - villain or superhero? - leaning on the & and Eliza in semi comic con outfit with arms crossed and standing on the N and S of Cons Next to the book is a cute sticker page featuring a coffin and iced latte next to Vampire Falls and Love Bites (with the requisite fangs)
The star of Project Hail Mary, a dog / crab alien who looks like an articulated rock
Abstract: ‘Young Widowhood and its Manifestations' This poem will examine the ways in which the young widow becomes a shapeshifter. By day, she is required to maintain the perfect display of mourning (controlled, composed, adhering to jet-black convention to appease the onlookers pressing their moon-faces to the windows). Yet by night, she finds herself transformed into a being that is fearful and chaotic, possessing an energy comparable to a poltergeist hurling cups onto the floor (these are, of course, the best cups, never used, saved for a time that didn't arrive). I will explore how the young widow inevitably comes to experience a series of hauntings borne from this fragmentation of identity. From regrets buried so deeply that their disembodied whispers can only be picked up by the most sensitive recording equipment, to the appearance on the landing of unborn ghost children, the young widow is stalked by the replayed memories and unfulfilled hopes that saturate the walls of her house. This supernatural turmoil ironically takes place even as she herself gropes desperately in the darkness for the illusive spectre of the spouse who left her behind. 63
Mary Shelley loses it with her reader you think it's because I gave the monster a voice because I buried it in the centre like guilt *because I centred it* because I was left alone on the beach like a survivor my corpus waterlogged and bloated ink diluted to the point of illegibility ineligibility you think it's a good thing to *survive* that's because you've never had to live beyond survival all that's left is his heart is a lump of meat that only half loved me no choice but to operate instruments splayed like ribs as I join us like twins it's alright for him he's anaesthetised (while my screams are trapped in specimen jars) 60
Inside Bradford’s Waterstones - like a church to books - not pictured: scaffolding for urgent repairs shutting off the poetry section
PowerPoint slides reading Goth or Not? With an image of Bela Lugosi as Dracula with a slide confirming Goth!
Wayne a finger puppet bat with grey body and black wings, orange eyes and a red smile at Manchester Vic
The Way the Water Held Me featuring a flock of white geese against a watery background and 4 scenes of Bradford on a postcard from the Waterstones in the Festival Hub
A finger puppet bat in front of a Burscough Bridge sign in the sunshine
Me on stage gesturing at a long quotation from Frankenstein ending with what I called the t-shirt-able quote: Beware for I am fearless and therefore powerful
Islamophobe? • Many of Mary Shelley's novels contain anti-Muslim sentiment • In Frankenstein, Safie (with whom the monster learns to read, secretly) is a Christian refugee from Islamic oppression • In The Last Man, the plague that wipes out humanity comes out of the East after a disastrous crusade • Perkin Warbeck fights in the Crusades, saved from dying in battle by another Christian convert woman • Racism? Or commentary on otherness and the possibility of solidarity?
An ironing board and iron hooked to a hotel coat rack from which a jacket is hanging - somehow my just awake brain superimposed the two making it look like someone was moving from the hotel room door around the corner towards my bed
Me micced up in my Disco Lights & Trans Rights Mermaids Pride t-Shirt and academic jacket with a Bradford Lit Fest scheeen behind me
The Festival hub in front of the town hall with banners etc - zoomed out like the children do with moody clouds as background
Banner - orange with a man dressed in orange dancing -for Bradford Lit Fest now I’m in Bradford!
A tweed jacket with a red Brontë Scholar shield-shaped badge
Hazel our calico kitten sitting on a chest of drawers in front of some miniature terracotta warriors above Wilbur our black cat lying on the bed looking at me - they look like they are plotting something!
Our calico kitten Hazel sitting on a window ledge in the sunshine
4 panels of a comic strip with Charlotte in a central panel dressed in black with a funky goth headdress and veil with a orange eye glowing through - our adventurers are in bell shaped cages and Izzy, a Godbinder, gasps ‘you’re Charlotte Brontë!’
Supergirl poster with Krypto the super dog with ear cocked wearing an outsized yellow collar with the tagline watch out universe
A series of messenger messages reading: 10:21 screenshot of UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH Head of the School of Area Studies Sociology History Politics and Literature Me: This school sounds wild! Rita posting a gif of #SchittsCreek MAYBE JUST A SMATTERING OF EVERYTHING? Me: Hi im the head of school of ASSHPL
Teeny notebook with green background and strap featuring Cute pandas with cute anthropomorphised bamboo - that the cute pandas presumably predate!
Gillray’s satirical print An Excrescence, a Fungus. Also, a Toadstool upon a Dunghill showing William Pitt as a mushroom feeding on a buried crown
A mother duck with ducklings sitting in front of 2 fishing lines at a lake
Ecosia claiming to find no results on The World Wide Web for the search ‘bound sex scene’
My black cat stretched out on my leg while we listen to the radio - he is a looooooong boy
A sign reading Well Behaved Dogs Only with a little DAs Hund sitting with front paws crossed at a table next to a coffee - in chalk
A red mini notebook with Japanese characters and some sort of kawaii animal and boy
Cold slices of margarita pizza on a grey plate on a yellow footstool
Everyone at EHU Nineteen’s Placing the Nineteenth Century enjoying a Prosecco or non alcoholic alternative at Claire’s workshop
My big black cat Wilbur lying on me asking for scritches in the sunshine
Me holding a 99 flake up with Italiano ice cream can in red white and green in the next door industrial estate
A picture of my legs so blindingly white and offensive I wouldn’t be surprised if bluesky mods slapped a sticker on this image in shorts and sandals
Daisy Edgar Jones as Elinor and Esme Creed Miles as Marianne running in dresses looking happy in the sun - not sure the tag line ‘Being Agreeable Never Did a Woman Any Good’ is book accurate tho as it’s essentially Lucy Steele’s successful strategy and Elinor’s less successful plea to Marianne throughout
My profile pic (a student doodle of me) and banner (Hazel as a kitten popping out from under our sofa) with the motto ‘Solving real word problems’ added to my bio: Hopeless Romanticist, childless cat dad, and coffee addict (he/him)
I am standing in the corner with my legs jauntily crossed reading from my paper ‘Angrian Adventures & Gondolian Games in the Brontë Poems’ with a slide for Part 1: Child’s Play in the Juvenilia illustrated by a still from To Walk Invisible with children wearing flaming crowns in a black walled lecture theatre
I am sitting between Emily Friedman and Samuel Mui Soon - I have one arm raised like I’m leading a revolution
The Principal Skinner ‘Am I So Out of Touch?’ Meme reading: DID I SQUANDER AN ERA-DEFINING MAJORITY CHASING FAR RIGHT VOTES WHILST ATTACKING VULNERABLE MINORITIES AND DENYING GENOCIDE? This text runs over Seymour’s head which I think is fitting. NO, IT'S THE ELECTORATE WHO ARE WRONG.
A view over a fishing platform surrounded by greenery to a misty lake - will this be The First Big Weekend of the Summer?
It’s Frans Hals’ The Laughing Cavalier: big hat, moustaches, side eye, grin, huge decorated orange and black sleeves with lacy frills and black cloak
Hazel our calico kitten sitting on top of our grey armchair on the far left of the photo looking at a spider on the wall on the far right
Night & Day poster with Haley Bennett as Kit surrounded by British acting luminaries - I snatched this off IMDB as ‘Blaze Your Trail’ is a better tagline than ‘Claim Your Space’
Double page spread in red fading to cream at the top with the Die heroes spread out over the pages - Ash in the middle in a ball gown looking down saying ‘we’re back’ with Isabelle in the far left background, Matthew looking warily at his sword, Angela crouched over looking at her cybernetic arm, and Chuck with his fist raised looking off page to the right - he has a d6 earring and other jewellery
Wilbur our black cat lying on the grey armchair opposite me one arm draped over edge looking casual
Front cover of Die in Red with a bleeding hand dropping a d20 into a blood spattered hand, city scape along the bottom, storms up top
The full wraparound cover of Kate Scarth’s *brilliant* Romantic Suburbs in Green with a woman on the front wearing an extraordinary flowery fascinator - testing on a park bench
Abigail Parry’s I Think We’re Alone Now with a black and white beetle on the cover and Kieron Gillen’s Die vol 1 Fantasy Heartbreaker featuring a bleeding hand dropping a D20 into an open hand with drops of blood on it against a red background with cityscape at bottom and dark cloud above
It’s the bit where the horse dies in the Never Ending Story
Florence Pugh in flowery cult dress smiling painfully at the end of Midsommar