Helen Macdonald

@hjm.bsky.social

12190 Followers 862 Following

Writer. One half of a dynamic duo. H is for Hawk, Vesper Flights. PROPHET with Sin Blache. Rep by the Clegg Agency. Non-binary. They/she

Converging lines of wheat stubble climbing a hill to a horizon where, silhouetted left to right: dark smear of treetop, 14th century church tower, sparse ash crown, two further bulks of the tops of trees, the whole suffused with a steady orange and peach evening light. SUFFOLK, UK
A tray with a human femur on it and a rib bone with the Reddit caption “got these free at a ren faire market, any idea what either are from?”
Dimly lit corner of bedroom with en-suite bathroom door and a plush Bagpuss on a table against the wall. All is dark and shaded except for soft golden light against the leftmost wall and a truly terrifying glow around Bagpuss’a chin that makes him look like he’s just crawled up from Hell and is a scion of evil
Title page of “SURREALISM” Edited by Herbert Read, Faber and Faber, 1936
Orange plastic roadworks warning sign by the side of the road bearing the legend “RAISED MANHOLES AHEAD”
A vaguely orange labradoodle that has been dyed and clipped into a striped approximation of a tiger sits on the carpet at JFK. He wears a harness and has a purple leash with THERAPY DOG written on it.
INCREDIBLY WRONG Google AI overview of “Second Avenue” a poem by Frank O’Hara. Text reads “Second Avenue"" is a novel by Frank O'Hara that follows the lives of a group of young artists and writers living in New York City in the 1950s. The story centers around a young man named Kenneth Koch, who is struggling to find his place in the world and make a name for himself as a poet. ... “
Gorgeous and inclusive Pride flag in coloured lights on the ceiling of the entrance to terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport
An open basket hydrogen balloon track on flight radar. Marked as a little red balloon shape just under the westernmost coast of Cornwall, barometric altitude 23,425 ft, ground speed 53 kts.
“Just as we were wrapping up the day, someone rushed in with the biggest smile. “It happened,” she said. And what happened? "Helen placed an order with REDACTED." Yes, you, THE Helen. Everything paused for a moment. Smiles all around. A little excitement in the air. The kind that reminds us there’s a real person behind every order. We talked about you. About how grateful we are that you chose REDACTED. About how moments like this are the reason we started in the first place. Once the excitement settled, we got straight to work preparing your order with extra care. Every detail is handled thoughtfully, because it’s being made just for you.
The interior of a small Church of England church, a series of trestle tables covered with white tablecloths, plates, bunches of flowers, sandwiches, home made cakes. Towards the altar, villagers sit and chat and stand about in summer clothes. Gold green light through the stained glass chancel window
Cover and snippet of random interior page of HOW TO SEE LIKE A MACHINE by TREVOR PAGLEN, whose work I’ve adored since seeing him give a talk at a Cambridge conference on espionage a billion years ago
Photo of a field in Suffolk against a gold and grey evening sky with a distinctly atomic test shot vibe: in the foreground the dusty green loved leaves and pretty purple and black flowers of field beans
Data panel for Tajik Air, showing relevant emotionally compromising points: founded 1924; fleet size: 1 Aircraft.
Book cover: Dale Of The Mounted Dew Line Duty by Joe Holliday. Tomato red with a uniformed, behatted Canadian Mounted Policeman standing before a square, cream-bordered insert showing a DEW Line station, its radome glowing like a full moon in the night, snow all around, quonset hut, two figures in khaki, Canadian and US flags flying, many poles of some kind or other, stars and the aurora borealis descending, the whole demonstrating the West's unceasing surveillance against Soviet ICBMs that would give people at least four minutes' warning to say their prayers
Cover and interior images of the CD of the motion picture soundtrack to H IS FOR HAWK by Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch
David Attenborough in a blue anorak crouching in course island grass near a huge fledgling Royal Albatross. Behind them both, blue sea and softest sky.
Illustration of black hole warping the fabric of space time only it’s not a black hole it’s jet lag
Two plush turkey vultures with red faces, fluffy black eyebrows and white felt feet sit companionably on a hotel bed dressed with white linens
Screen shot of a tiktok by monicafrempong captioned “I thought I came to Accra for peace … why am I being personally attacked by a poster” over a photo of a billboard with giant capital letters saying LOOK AT YOUR STOMACH, ARE YOU PROUD OF IT OR YOU CAN EXPLAIN?
Detailed black biro drawing by 7yo Helen depicting a field of knights, some on horseback, some unseated, all fighting, some impaled and dead, featuring an inordinate number of swords and flying arrows. Genuinely disturbing tbh
Yellow shouldered Amazon parrot singing along to Led Zeppelin’s KASHMIR in quite fine style
Three photos of a feathered but unfledged Philippine Eagle chick bred by artificial insemination as part of a conservation breeding program. His beak is huge, his eyes blue, and he has an extraordinarily adorable air.
Guardian headline: Too hot to handle? Why it's time for straight male authors to rediscover sex
A series of twilight shots of a rural Essex village that has so far escaped the replacement of orange streetlights with white ones, rendering the whole place a time capsule that made me quite emotional
A large magazine sized softback book, the cover of which shows a colour photograph of a brown and cream Plaxton coach from 1962. The title of the book is: MY FAVOURITE COACH and below the photograph: 932 BCE by Jim Neale
A leucistic pheasant, pure white against a backdrop of cumulus clouds and October blue sky, rockets up from a field of autumn maize.
a photo of a grey squirrel staring into the eyes of a lead garden sculpture of a squirrel with the caption "it's like it's gone to Narnia and found its wife"
Image of two staff members in a Wimpy restaurant, one a woman in a red shirt, the other inside the terrifying Beefeater costume of MR WIMPY. Grubby ruff, the whole costume clearly the worse for wear
first edition cover of the ipcress file featuring a cup of coffee, a stubbed-out cigarette, a couple of .38 cartridges and a Smith&Wesson .38 Centennial Airweight
Eclectus parrot being the cutest ever oh my GOD
Colombo Bandaranaike international airport
Two people, and a red-naped shaheen falcon held close to the camera, in a winter oilseed rape field, soft grey and blue stratocumulus, everyone including the falcon looking v happy. Second person is me.