John Berkeley Grout 🏳️‍🌈🔶

@jrberkeley.bsky.social

1364 Followers 665 Following

John (he/him) aka. John Berkeley; Leovinas. UK-based writer of SFF, player of RPGs, Classics/archaeology/ancient history PhD, process/telecoms specialist. The sort of gay lefty Liberal your mother warned you about. Views my own, etc. (no TERFs or AI, ta)

A view of Whitby, the Abbey ruins and St Mary's Church, under a blue sky and late afternoon sun, framed by leaves, with a little sailing boat anchored on the Esk beneath the Abbey.
A picture of Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey, on a purple cloth. The cover features the painting of The Ladies of the Minoan Court from the Palace of Knossos, fading to white: three women with elaborate gold-beaded black hair, one looking left and two to the right, with their hands raised as if speaking or waving.
A wire cooling rack on a metal surface in the corner of a white-tiled kitchen, with roughly shaped golden-brown biscuits cooling on it. A large Cadbury's Roses tin is in the foreground, a bunch of Lego daffodils is in the background, along with a glass bowl with some ornaments in it. The biscuits are caraway-nut shortbread: - Take a basic shortbread recipe of your preference. - Swap the sugar for light muscovado sugar. - Add half a teaspoon of ground allspice and a pinch of salt. - Add a handful of caraway seeds and a small handful of demerara sugar. - Add ~75g of roughly-chopped mixed nuts (unsalted and unroasted) to the mix after you've finished the rubbing-together phase but before you start combining it into dough. - Sprinkle extra demerara on top once you've arranged them on the baking tray. - They'll probably take a bit longer than usual to bake, due to the nuts' thickness meaning you probably have to cut them thicker than normal. My recipe was for 15-20 minutes and these were in for 23. Enjoy.
A picture of a large sandwich style Victoria sponge, with cream, fresh strawberries, and strawberry jam just visible inside, and icing sugar on top. It is in the upturned lid of a large, ornate blue Cadbury's Roses tin sitting on a square of kitchen roll wil the corners sticking like wings, or a fancy collar. Said Roses tin is in the background along with a silver kettle.
A picture of the cover of an order of service "In Celebration of the Life of Wendy Joy Jones OBE, 29th July 1939 - 5th May 2026" The cover features a black and white photo of an older woman in a short sleeved shirt sitting at a large Yamaha piano keyboard in a living riom next to a bookshelf. She has shortish hair anf is wearing glasses, chunky headphones, and a twinkly "are you done yet?" expression towards the photographer.
A screenshot from Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (2014) showing a coffin, with the in-game heads-up popup text 'Press F to Pay Respects' showing
A screenclip of a a BBC feed of a Starlink video at T+01:06:39, showing a large fiery mushroom cloud exploding over a dark ocean, in the way that "mostly successful" rocket journeys don't.
A picture of a battered pen resting on an open notebook. In the background is a shaded path with a little fence and a green park of sunlit grass and trees, with scattered groups of people sitting or strolling. A multistorey office blook looms over a copper beech in the middle distance.
A screenclip of a test result, showing my result as 'Progressive Liberal' - Socially liberal and cosmopolitan, with a belief in public services and an internationalist outlook. Prioritises civil liberties and constitutional renewal.
A screenclip of a newspaper-style column, reading: "In April 1943, MI5 was in the final stages of launching Operation Mincemeat, the bizarre deception plot to fool the Germans over the invasion of Sicily by planting false papers on a corpse. The organisers needed a pair of theatre stubs for the dead man's wallet to make the Nazis believe he had been in London on a specific day. "They went to see the music hall comedian Sid Field performing at the Prince of Wales Theatre. The back-up act that night was a new song-and-dance comedy duo, aged 16 and 17, a pair of northern lads making their West End debut: Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise."
A picture of an array of mostly orange Liberal Democrat leaflets featuring Councillor Meri O'Connell (Tilehurst, Reading Borough Council) and the Tilehurst water tower, on a burgundy red cloth, and with a battered wooden spatula with a faded LGBT+ Liberal Democrats rainbow sticker on it.
A picture of the new Banksy statue on Pall Mall, showing what appears to be a cast-iron statue of a suited man holding a flag aloft, but about to stride confidently off the stone plinth wuth the flag blowing in his face. It's a sunny day with blue sky, the occasional cloud, lots of people milling around the white crowd barriers, and a hint of the inevitable scaffolding, in this case around the Athenaeum.
The test card from BBC2 circa 1995 - a rectangular graphic with colored and black blocks on the outside, gretscale blocks on thr inside, and a generationally-iconic photo of a blonde girl in a red dress, with a long, high pony-tail, playing Noughts and Crosses on a blackboard with a frankly terrifying clown doll in a green shirt, in the middle. Best viewed with a long, penetrating, completely uninterrupted and infinite BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP tone.
An almost-half Moon in a brilliantly blue sky, above the green leaves of a hedge side-lit by golden evening sun.
Some brilliantly purple English bluebells in a wood on a sunny day, with leaves shining in the sun.
A copy of the tabletop RPG Defy the Gods by Chrys Sellers, on maroon fabric. The book is surtitled 'Queer Sword and Sorcery' and the cover features a variety of heroes and heroines battling a vast bearded statue with its hand outstretxhed as if throwing the two clay coloured cuneiform dice sitting on top of the book.
A white and faintly pink magnolia flower, with pale green leaves, in sunlight, with trees and a blue snd cloudy sky in the background.
A fine Stargate SG-1 meme, featuring a slightly yellowish still of the Gate control room from one of the later seasons, looking in through the main windows, with, from left to right: Teal'c saying "Indeed..." Cameron Mitchell saying "I dunno 'bout you, Teal'c, but I'm kinda here for it." One of the Gate control room staffers saying "No, sir, General. It's definitely a shitpost." Daniel Jackson saying "Why are we reading it right-to-left?" General Landry saying "Are we sure this isn't something meaningful, or an appreciation post?" Sergeant Harriman saying "It seems to be some sort of shitpost, Ma'am." and Samantha Carter saying "Walter, what are we looking at?" In that order. You are ever so welcome.
The title card of Spellbinder (1995), with the word in slightly steampunky die-cut metallic letters, on top of a roundel featuring what seems to be a snake and a sunburst.
A bunch of cheerful red tulips with yellow-edged petals and black anthers, and their green leaves, in a large white and blue floral-patterned Victorian ewer, on a side table with a scented candle under a bell jar, and a Cadbury's Roses tin.
A sunlit green field with tufts of grass, overlooked by looming, ivy-clad trees just coming into leaf above a ramshackle fence. In the foreground are two brown wild rabbits, one sitting and one rummaging in the grass.
A scattering of deeply purple six-petalled flowers with golden centres, most partly open in a bell shape, bent against the heathy grass in the wind.
A screencap of the BBC website live update feed covering Artemis II, with an update from 17:42 highlighted, with the title "The Moon is in the Artemis crew's sights - but there's a long way to go". The author is cited as "Jenna Moon, live editor (no relation)"
A photo of a twig covered in white blossoms, with more visible in the background against a vibrant blue sky.
A screenclip from an old Facebook 'report this image' prompt. It asks "What's going on?" The four radio buttons you can choose are "It's annoying or not interesting", "I think it shouldn't be on Facebook", and "It's spam". The one that's checked is "I'm in this photo and I don't like it".
A selfie of me on a train, sitting in a green-upholstered chair and wearing a black jumper with my hair down, looking a little tired/done already...
A photo along a windowsill of a Christmas cactus, a serially-segmented greeen plant, with large, delicately-pink flower budding and blooming. A magenta cyclamen and a fern in a pot are also visible.
A strongly purple violet flower amid the greenery of lush spring grass
A crown spike of a green, thorny gorse bush, festooned with gold-yellow flowers, sidelit by late winter sun, with a bright blue sky and sea in the background.
A screenclip of the Bluesky Accessibility settings, with the "Require alt-text before posting" box ticked.
A shiny square black roasting tin containing halved strawberries that have been roasted, glistening in a thick syrup. 250g of the dullest strawberries you can possibly imagine, hulled and halved (250g is the post-hulling weight), cut side up, scattered with 25g of golden caster sugar and roasted at 150°C in a fan oven, for 30 minutes.
A generated Telegraph OpEd headline purporting to be by Allister Heath, titled "The chilling rise of John Berkeley proves that the culture war is already lost"
What are the four core character classes? Wrong answers only. The picture is a woodcut in the fashion of early D&D illustrations of an armoured man fighting a skeleton.
A photograph of a gravestone of 'Jemima Nicholas, "the Welsh Heroine" who boldly marched to meet the French invaders who landed on our shores in February 1797' - it notes that she went on to die at the age of 82.
A trio of five-petalled white flowers with yellow stamens are on a twig with leaf buds (blackthorn/sloe). In the background are some branches, sone out of focus snowdrops, and some broad common ivy leaves.
A cartoon of a 17th Century plague doctor with the crow's beak mask, holding a pink balloon with RIP written on it. They have pink feathers in their hat and pink and grey spherical decorations in the background.
A freeze frame from Derry Girls, with Sister Michael (a headmistress and nun) sitting behind her desk. Yellow caption (a stroppy pupil offscreen): "If anyone deserves to get punished it should be Mandelson!" White caption (Sister Michael): "Well I think it's safe to say we all just lost a bit of respectvfor you there, Wes." (The image has obviously overwritten the original - Michelle and Clare - with Mandelson and Wes)
A picture of a large golden cake on a white, dot-patterned plate. The cake has a large dollop of violently-red stewed plums on top. The plate is on a dull red tablecloth with traditional patterns on it, and some apples and lemons are visible in the background. The trick with making cakes in holiday lets is to remember that flour has twice the volume by weight of sugar, so if you pick a mug and use 1 of sugar and one of chunked up butter, 2 of flour should see you right. (I always use metric when baking, but needs must).
A view over rolling green fields with bare trees and hedgerows beneath a vibrant blue sky with a hint of the Irish Sea in the distance. A cedar tree is in the foreground, and much of the immediate foreground is in the shadow of another tree.
A photo of two books side by side on a wooden table: 'Meanwhile, in Another Part of the Forest', edited by Alberto Manguel & Craig Stephenson, which has the title in gold on a dark blue/purple background above Botticelli's Venus and Mars; and 'An Honour & a Privilege', edited by Lindz McLeod, which has a brick red cover with the title in white, with the inner spaces of the ampersand in black.
A freeze-frame of Kier Starmer talking at a podium in the White House with the seal of the US Presidency on it, and a US and a UK flag behind him, with part of a fluted-plastered wall and a gold curtain behind. Kier Starmer is looking down at the podium while speaking; the caption says "There's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom"
A screenclip of two skeets by John Scalzi about the apple pie mac & cheese he made with cheese & apple grilled sandwiches.
A picture of a limestone amd flint chequerboard gothic church tower against a brilliant blue sky, with a tree scattered with golden autumn leaves in the foreground. A brightly backlit Union flag is flying atop the church tower among the finials and crenellations. The tower is of Reading Minster, St Mary's, built in 979 AD.
A picture of me standing at a lectern with the Liberal Democrats name and bird-of-liberty logo in white. Virtually everything else is violently tangerine orange, except for a vertical stripe of the stage setting which has various interesting icons in it like Big Ben and a heart. I'm halfway through saying something but don't look too gormless.
Me with my eyes closed in front of a small waterfall against dark rocks. I have long hair and am wearing a knitted jumper with a white stripe across the shoulders, and have a leather strap with a buckle visible.
A screencap of a Microsoft loading window in white, with the subtext "Updating Microsoft 365 and Office, please wait a moment...", which inevitably precedes me ruthlessly scouring it to make sure it's not snuck AI into my computer when I didn't ask it to.
Danger Mouse, an anthropomorphic white mouse with a black eyepatch and red belt, points skywards while Penfold, a nervous bespectacled hamster in a suit, peeks out from behind his legs.
A large blue dumpster style rubbish bin by a path, with a large label duct-taped to it reading "TEMPORARY SUMMER BIN"
A copy of The Salt in the Sea by JD Rivers, on a blue cloth. The book has a cover design of a tall, darker young man and a shorter, blonde young man embracing, the taller kissing the forehead of the shorter, with a huge redsun like disk behind them, a star over their heads, and surrounded by scrolling, sweeping waves.
A picture of a red brick Georgian house in an English village. It's on the corner of a lane, with a tiled roof and a stretch of grass between it and the road, with a rambling old pub opposite and an English flag on a pole by the garden wall,in front of a huge old yew tree. The sky is gloriously blue. It is Jane Austen's house in Chewton, Hampshire.
A black and white picture of mostly young people at a climate protest in Australia, in front of a large building with neoclassical pilasters between its windows. I the foreground, a young person with long dark hair squints up at a hand-painted sign reading "We'll be less activist if you be less shit"
Three purple crocuses with pale hearts and bright saffron stamens peek out of green grass. Behind them is a stand if tall daffodil leaves with some open daffodils facing left. In the background is a bush against a red brick wall.
A pair of stills from The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). In the top frame, Gandalf (Ian McKellen) walks beside Saruman (Christopher Lee). Gandalf is unkempt and wears grey robes, with his head is bowed in thought, while Saruman is well-groomed in white and stares contemplatively ahead. The caption reads "Elves and Men started this war, we will sit down with Sauron and discuss which rare earth metal reserves and pieces of the Shire he would like in return for peace." The bottom frame is a close-up of Saruman speaking, adding "WHICH ISILDUR NEVER EVEN TRIED, BY THE WAY"
Ra (Stargate; Jaye Davidson) speaks menacingly to Daniel Jackson (James Spader) while his eyes glow. Jaye Davidson is so beautiful in this film that many viewers are unsure of the character's gender. Davidson, who is gay and has since become extremely hench, has said this was deliberate, but Ra was definitely male.
The cover art of Arcanum: of Steamworks & Magick Obscura. Through a cog-shaped hole in a large metal plate is visible a burning forest, a steampunkish castle atop a forested ridge, and a large airship, behind a large portrait of a dark-haired, blue-eyed, pale elven woman with red tadpole facial tattoos in an inverted T shape across her eyes and forehead. Below her are a shadowy figure emerging from the burning forest, a dwarven man armed with a flamethrower, a human male mage wielding a staff and raising a burning blue hand towards the viewer, and a steam locomotive. At the bottom is the title of the game in riveted brass letters.
A vast, vaguely Star Destroyer-shaped stone is perched on three narrow vertical stones, with a fourth standing facing the camera to the side. All five stones are Preseli bluestone covered in lichen, and a mountain rises in the distance to the right beneath a grey sky crowded with clouds. There are green fields of grass and Barr trees in the background. The area beneath the dolmen is shale gravel marked by cobble-like boundary stones forming a threshold between the shale and the grass. A few other cobble-like stones are scattered around. A barbed wire fence merges with a gorsebush hedge in the foreground behind the dolmen - this is deep in sheep country.
A large blond plum cake sits beside a knife on a wooden cutting board, on top of a cold glass hob, and is topped with cooked plums in syrup that have gone violently red and started dripping down the cut face. Pieces of plum can be seen in the cake itself. Two 45° slices of the cake sit in the foreground on white, blue and black reactive-glaze plates. The horror.
A black ink cartoon of a stylish Anubis wearing a turtleneck jumper, jeans and shoes, snapping his fingers at the reader while leaning to one sides and saying "Don't hate yourself, that's homophobic"