Timothy C. Baker

@timothycbaker.bsky.social

2052 Followers 1463 Following

Lectures on Scottish and contemporary literature, writes about animals, tries to be hopeful. He/they. Currently trying to open a cinema in Aberdeen.

Portrait of a man with kind eyes, bushy eyebrows, and the largest muttonchops you've ever seen outside of amateur drama.
In the margin of an academic book is placed a thin grey sticky note depicting an upside down squirrel. The reader has written ‘why?’
Still from Watership Down. A cross-looking seagull, with bright blue wings, smacks a bunny.
DVD box set of Buffy the Vsmpire Slayer, with the first season open.
Screenshot of the lyrics to Sufjan Stevens's 'Fourth of July', reading [Outro] and then the line 'We're all gonna die' repeated seven times in a row.
There is a tendency in memoirs of grief to focus on the loss, on the absence, while you have focused on the presence of books, the shared reading, the childhood classics. And there is a tendency to be serious, while you have reminded us that there are bunnies.
Cover of Reading My Mother Back: A Memoir in Childhood Animal Stories. The cover is blue, with a pen drawing of two rabbits. Dimly in the background you can see text excerpts from Watership Down, which no reader has picked up on but makes me extremely happy.
Pilate at Fortingall A Latin harsh with Aramaicisms poured from his lips incessantly; it made no sense, for surely he was mad. The glade of birches shamed his rags, in paroxysms he stumbled, toga’d, furred, blear, brittle, grey. They told us he sat here beneath the yew even in downpours; ate dog-scraps. Crows flew from prehistoric stone to stone all day. ‘See him now.’ He crawled to the cattle-trough at dusk, jumbled the water till it sloshed and spilled into the hoof-mush in blue strands, slapped with useless despair each sodden cuff, and washed his hands, and watched his hands, and washed his hands, and watched his hands, and washed his hands.
Photo of a first edition of The Quarry Wood (in poor shape), showing a young woman in a long grey dress and a jaunty red cap bracing herself against the wind.
Close-up of Garbo, in a negligee, with subtitle reading ‘I’ve never been so tired in my life’.
Cover of the Aberdeen Bon-Accord and Northern Pictorial Holiday Number, showing a motorboat speeding along the Aberdeen Beach.
Two white men in red shirts (one bald and wearing dark trousers, one with long blond hair and wearing white trousers) gesture at a flip chart reading 'No Joy No Joy No Joy'.
Text reading 'The English Chair is now held by George I. Duthie, 1955. Among the many notable teachers of English under professorial rank, W.D. Taylor singles himself out.'
Text Reading 'Impromptu Reads: The No Prep Preading Group with a Difference'.
Image for 'Tall Ships Book Group', showing the cover of Neil M. Gunn's The Silver Darlings against a blue background with a coiled rope.
Reader's Choice ballot for the 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, where I have listed The Gleaners and I; Yi Yi; Stories We Tell; Morvern Callar; Mad Max:Fury Road; Carol; Paddington 2; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; 120 BPM; and Under the Skin, like I've never had an original thought in my head.
Poster for the tv adaptation of I, Claudius, depicting Claudius on a mosaic background.
Photograph of an old-fashioned street lamp against a background of mist. Just lots of mist.
Saoirse Ronan sits behind the wheel of a car, looking stoic but panicked. She's wearing a polkadot blouse and a knit cardigan that might be a sort of orange colour that wouldn't suit me, but I really like it.
A copy of Ali Smith’s So in the Spruce Forest sits on a stack of books, including Claire Lynch’s A Family Matter.
Covers for the six books shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year. Private Rites by Julia Armfield The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley Extremophile by Ian Green Annie Bot by Sierra Greer Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf
Patinkin, in a yellow t-shirt reading Lust in the Dust, and Remick, in a teal top, look rapt.
During the session, committee convener Douglas Ross MSP revealed that the university's recovery plan document sent to trade unions included the number of job losses in its password. Prof O'Neill replied: "I'm surprised at that, I didn't know that." Mr Ross asked: "Do you think it's crass and wholly inappropriate that the number of job losses were included in that password?" The professor replied: "If that was deliberate, yes I agree with you."
Screenshot reading: The national emergency law lays out a fast-track process for Congress to consider a resolution ending a presidential emergency, requiring committee consideration within 15 calendar days after one is introduced and a floor vote within three days after that. But the language House Republicans inserted in their measure on Tuesday declared that, “Each day for the remainder of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of the emergency that Mr. Trump declared on Feb. 1.
iPlayer screencap reading 'If you liked "Blue Velvet" [try] Eight Grade'.
Julian Sands as George Emerson in A Room with a View. A young man, with floppy blond locks, lounges in braces and a white shirt, looking intently in the distance.
Opening titles of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, with the heavily-memed line ‘Oceans are now Battlefields’.
Volume of Charles Murray’s Hamewith and Other Poems on a paisley background.
Photograph of a white pillowcase embroidered with the words ‘It’s alright I love you’.
Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights – The young man carries a new guitar in his arms, the girl on the inside carries a very young baby, and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua. And the three of them are laughing, their breath rises in a cloud of happiness, and as they pass the boy says, ‘Wait till he sees this but!’ The chihuahua has a tiny Royal Stewart tartan coat like a teapot- holder, the baby in its white shawl is all bright eyes and mouth like favours in a fresh sweet cake, the guitar swells out under its milky plastic cover, tied at the neck with silver tinsel tape and a brisk sprig of mistletoe. Orphean sprig! Melting baby! Warm chihuahua! The vale of tears is powerless before you. Whether Christ is born, or is not born, you put paid to fate, it abdicates under the Christmas lights. Monsters of the year go blank, are scattered back, can’t bear this march of three. – And the three have passed, vanished in the crowd (yet not vanished, for in their arms they wind the life of men and beasts, and music, laughter ringing them round like a guard) at the end of this winter’s day.
Still from I Know Where I’m Going, showing a young Petula Clark with glasses and a Peter Pan collar.
Still from Gasman. A father carries his daughter on his back, walking down some unused rail tracks. Glasgow high rises are in the background.
Deathmask of an unknown woman. The woman's eyes are closed, and her smile is interpreted as peaceful/blissful.
Yellow Victor Gollancz dustjacket (1934) for Monica Curtis's Landslide, which beneath the title reads (in large letters): A remarkably powerful and beautiful novel. Indeed, one is embarrassed by the very profusion of its merits. (In smaller letters) 1st and foremost, it is an extremely good story: 2nd, it is important as a sociological & political study: 3rdly, it has brilliant qualities of a purely descriptive kind. This text takes up almost the entirety of the cover; there is a small red design in the top left corner that I can't quite decipher (it's not the normal VG logo or anything).
A list of prompts - 'bleached bone', 'turrets of deadlight', 'ancient tree stumps', and 'waves of stone' - to match with the respective answers: 'symbolizes desolation and decay', 'evokes a sense of abandonment and darkness', 'represents the enduring forces of nature', and 'suggests the transformation of ancient landscapes'. Also includes, as 'distractors', 'represents eternally youthful trees', 'symbolizes the collective memories of the community', and 'suggests the shifting sands of time'. There are no trees in the poem. It's not about any of that. I would put money on the phrase 'turrets of deadlight' never having crossed Jamie's mind.
Front page of A Gray Playbook, with inscription reading ‘TIM’S BOOK says Alasdair Gray’.
Front and back covers of the Redoubt. The front cover is a large blue cloud over what might be a narrow landscape, but is obscured by a library sticker. The back cover has a photograph of Elizabeth Mavor looking at a tree, but no additional information.
Drawing of two clowns, one in pink ruffles and one in black, with the text ‘Inside you there are two clowns. One romanticizes community, one romanticizes isolation.’
A copy of Richard Scarry’s board book I am a Bunny, besides a plywood plaque with bunnies and bottle of Vouvray (not containing bunnies).
Paperback on New Forms of Environmental Writing: Gleaning and Fragmentation in front of a small plastic Christmas tree.
A small bunny, in yellow jacket and red hat, gestures ebulliently in the snow.
Letter from Baroness Jean Coussins arguing that the closure of degrees in languages at Aberdeen will have strategic consequences across the UK, particularly in terms of school language provisions in Scotland and the Northeast, as well as internationalisation, and that these potential closures will also have reputational damage for the university.
Photograph of Jack Cole, right foot in air, wearing a very odd stripey crop top.
Lauren Bacall wearing a giant flower in her hair, screaming in displeasure while watching a boxing match.
Three hands hold cards depicting traditional sacred heart images, only Jesus' face has been replaced by Taylor Swift's.
Publicity photo of Ella Raines, presumably mid-40s, lounging on a small table and with the appearance of a halo behind her head.
Painting of a young Alutiiq woman in the style of a religious icon, holding a baby seal. Both human and seal have halos.
Poster for Slotherhouse, depicting a sorority house, some humans, and a sloth.
Screenshot of a lecturer pointing to an open page of a book in the middle of a lecture. The shadow of the lecturer's hand looks a little like a bird trying to eat the book.
Three panel comic by Tom Gauld for the New Scientist. Text reads 'I stared into the abyss. The abyss stared back. One thing led to another, and now I meet the abyss for regular chats in the coffee shop near my lab.'
A copy of Alice Hall's Contemporary Literature and the Body, placed in a tree.
A poster for 'The Red Shoes: Next Step'. It is not, to my knowledge, actually a sequel to The Red Shoes.
The swimming scene from A Room with a View (1986), easily the film I've seen most.
Isabella Rossellini in a Very Big red cape, for Vogue.
Jacob Campbell and Dallas King presenting on The Belmont Cinema (in front of a cool organ!).
Date stamps on a library book showing frequent borrowing between 1972 and 1975 and nothing since.
Photo of volunteers in a church basement in Dummerston, Vermont making pies for their annual apple pie festival.
Photograph of the back cover of Deirdre Sullivan’s Wise Creatures, listing ghosts, sisters, pain, and memories as key themes.