Mike Ashmore

@mp-ashmore.bsky.social

314 Followers 1342 Following

How do you do? Please don't hold this nonsense against anyone else.

A Grey Parrot on a perch at Northumberland Zoo. Well fed, healthy looking and giving visitors the eye.
An installation from the 'Enchanted City' trail. A set of scales, with a cow on one arm and milk bottles on the other. The whole thing is outside in a dark garden, lit with violet uplighters and dotted with gold stars.
The Fire Garden- a walled garden space with fire bowls in patterns on the ground and space-themed art installations dotted around. All the buildings in the backdrop are lit up in a deep indigo / violet combo.
A still of the Beastie Boys (Ad Rock, Mike D, M.C.A.) in full Japanese Civil Defence Services uniform, from their music video for Intergalactic. Which was a Godzilla / Mothra spoof, for context.
The bottom of amodern William Morris & Co Spode cup. The text reads: 'Spode / Morris & Co.', then some blurb about being dishwasher safe, then 'Made in China'.
Parakeets sit at the top of a sycamore tree somewhere in cold and rainy Gateshead.
Facebook Marketplace, showing the old four-image preview. This time the pictures are: the bloke from Wheetus, a baby chair, some metal pails of fried chicken and the single, tan leg of a baby doll. I think.
The back end of a small crowd of Anti migrant protestors with British and English flags and some other more obscure ones. There's a royal flag, but it's only printed on one side so there's a real chance it's a sheet or something.
Two St George and one Templar flag outside the old Laying in Hospital in Newcastle city centre
Bridge Street,Newcastle, looking quiet. One long protest has strung up some England flags on one side of the square.
A typewriter, half heartedly polished up and put on a shelf. For typewriter nerds: It's an Imperial Good Companion Model T.
The front page of Simon Roy's 'Habitat' comic, with a loinclothed tribesman fleeing across on the leg of a giant robot, backed by space-ships, astronaut-suited characters and a threatening looking exoskeleton.
'Swim' by John Dean. A large ceramic vase shaped like a shoal of fish swimming in tight formation.
The title page of the game 'stranded: alien dawn', with a group of space faring survivor types sit around a camp fire by the wreck of a rocket ship while space scorpions sneak up on them.
The movie poster for Cat Heaven Island, about a small semi abandoned island in Japan, with a picture of the feral cats who rule the place.
A picture, cut out of a colouring book, of a rabbit with a thousand yard stare. Like it's *seen things*, man.
Outside teddy bear lolloped on a chair, looking like a tired, drunk, middle aged man.
The Keep and Bailey of Warkworth Castle, Northumberland, against a grey, cloudy Northumberland sky.
A chicken with speckled black and white feathers, perched on a fence in a snowy coop somewhere. Someone has added small, pink, plastic dinosaur arms to the chicken, which now looks like a tiny veloceraptor.
A load of digestives biscuits - proper ones mind you, no knock offs- covered in what turns out to be white chocolate so they look sort of like mummies. A small kid is adding googly candy eyes to them, proving the point that googly eyes make everything better without any possible doubt or exception.
Small girl holding two boxes of medicine in front of a rainbow-and-giraffes mural at the Great North Children's Hospital, Newcastle.
Joe Sacco's "Safe Area Gorazde". The cover is hand illustrated and yellow tinted. A convoy of trucks and armoured vehicles winds up a mountain road. They pass the shattered ruins of a village where the buildings are empty shells and the trees bare.
'Q' by Luther Blissett. On the cover, a woodcut figure of Death, playing a fiddle, steps out from the centre of a typeset letter Q.
'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable', Originally by E C Brewer, 20th Edition, edited by Susie Dent. A plain white background, with the title picked out in a strange idiosyncratic font compiled from a dozen different image a of miscellaneous things- from crowns, skeletons, lighthouses etc. It's deeply odd and also genius, you should take a look.
Douglas Adams' 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'. The cover shows a brass plaque, engraved with the book's title, shining against a deep blue sky full of dark clouds.
'The King's Revenge: Charles II and the greatest Manhunt in British History'' by Don Jordan and Michael Walsh. A plain cover decorated with a bloodied axe.
A *lot* of swans menacing a party of kids for their birdseed.
Two swans and a seagull on a large, muddy pond with grassy banks. In the foreground a Mute swan walks out of the water. Behind it, a Bewicks swan glides by. The gull bobs about behind them.
The front page of a compendium of Shirley Jackson's short stories: 'The Lottery and other Stories'. The image shows a well dressed, pale skinned white woman lying motionless on a floor of dark, gravelly stones.
The Beast with Five Fingers, by W.F. Harvey. The cover shows a darkened room. A shadowy figure looms against the glass at the window. In the foreground, a shaft of light shines on a severed hand poised as if to leap out of the page.
Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel 'Mort'. A scared young man, a young lady with silver hair, a wizard, a barbarian woman and the skeletal figure of Death ride a pale horse through roiling clouds. The figure of Death holds a huge scythe and a golden hourglass.
'Mother Night's by Kurt Vonnegut. On a plain white page, a typewriter painted with the US and Soviet flags spools out a page with the novel's title.
'The Circle' by Dave Eggers. The plain red cover has a company logo in its centre: a circle surrounding a knitted grid, with a small ‘c’ in the center
Emily Carroll's 'Through the Woods'. An illustrated cover in stark black a white except for huge red moon that looms through the trees. At the edge of the woods is the shilouette of a cottage with a single light showing. The bottom third of the page is a mass of jagged branches reaching up through the black edges.
The front page of Margaret Atwood's novel 'Oryx and Crake'. A plain black background with green and white text in a bold, disordered handwritten font. Three small green rabbits hop along the bottom edge of the page.
The front page of David Graeber's 'Debt, the first 5000 years'. A plain, bright red background, with the title in large white text, and an image of a ball and chain.
The front cover of Russell Hoban's novel 'Riddley Walker'. Split into horizontal panels, the top shows a picture of overcast, wet woodland in autumn, the bottom a Mr Punch puppet abandoned in the leaf litter.
The front cover of 'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro. Two figures, a young man and woman, run down a pier towards the pavillion at its end.
The front page of Vladimir Nabokov's book 'Pale Fire'. An all black background contrasts with the white text of the title, and single orange and butterfly image created out of pictures of faces.
The front cover of 'Piranesi' by Susannah Clarke. A Satyr dances and plays the pipes on a classical marble column. The background is black with a strip of brown, etched with a pattern like old lithograph drawings. The title is arranged across the column in a formal but disordered typeface.
The cover of Robert Westall's book 'The Cats of Seroster'. A young man in medieval clothes stand resting on a broadsword, flanked by half a dozen large, golden-furred cats.
Five runners dressed as t-rexes posed in front of the Tyne bridge with charity buckets. A small girl stands in front wearing a shirt that reads 'Solving kids cancer UK'.