Jan Hicks
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dustystacks.bsky.social
Jan Hicks
@dustystacks.bsky.social
50 followers 64 following 110 posts
Archivist. Book reader. Persistent.

I write down my thoughts about books here https://thinkaboutreading.wordpress.com/

I write other things here https://thesiftingwell.wordpress.com/
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dustystacks.bsky.social
I especially like how the tiny Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge inside the actual Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge adds not even a mite of creepiness.
Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge not looking creepy. Tiny Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge also not looking creepy viewed through a small pane of glass.
October 28, 2025 at 9:55 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
I like Epping Forest and Connaught Water
The not at all creepy Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge. A tree that has seen some bad times but soldiered on regardless. Fungal gathering on a fallen branch. Connaught Water in Epping Forest.
October 28, 2025 at 9:55 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
I had a flexi day off today. We went to see the autumn colours at Dunham Massey this afternoon. The trees and the kitchen garden cooperated nicely.
A view of the Orangery at Dunham Massey from one of the entrances to the Woodland Walk. Acers in autumn colours at Dunham Massey. The mossy trunk and branches of an acer palmatum at Dunham Massey. Kale and cavalo nero planted with marigolds in the kitchen garden at Dunham Massey.
October 20, 2025 at 5:30 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
It's a grey, damp day, I'm reading Local Haunts by Adam Scovell and his essay about Alderley Edge has sent me back to our most recent visit on a similarly grey, damp day.
#AlderleyEdge #AlanGarner #WierdstoneCountry
A view of the Cheshire Plain from Stormy Point, Alderley Edge A strange hollow in a rocky outcrop at Alderley Edge Castle Rock, Alderley Edge Human marks on Castle Rock, Alderley Edge
October 20, 2025 at 10:15 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
2.5 months ago, while assembling some boltless shelving at work with an inadequate camping mallet, I clobbered a finger. Like the rings on a tree, my finger nail tells the story.
#HumanBiology #FingerNail
Clobbering your finger at the nail bed with a £3 camping mallet leaves a trace on your finger nail as it grows. Don't be like me. Practice safe hammering. Mallet inflicted groove travelling up my finger nail as it grows. The constructed boltless shelving that was responsible for me inexpertly wielding a cheap rubber camping mallet during its assembly. The almost shredded rubber camping mallet. Who knew a whack with something so small could do such damage?
October 20, 2025 at 10:03 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
In the mid-80s, before scanning and the internet, it was possible to copy the album by hand into a school exercise book. That's how the unofficial UK pressing came about.
Travel back in time to follow this reviewer's example and hand copy your favourite Gothic cookbook into a school exercise book. (Image is of a 2014 review of Vegetarian Gothic on Amazon)
October 20, 2025 at 8:25 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
At the end of this week we packed 663 volumes onto 11 pallets at the off-site store and reshelved them in the new store. Pictured are the Rate Books which measure roughly 55cmx60cmx5cm and weigh up to 10kg each. I'm glad I had the DeepStore team's help!
#archives #collectionsmove
Stephen, Jay and Dan from DeepStore removing Rate Books from shelves at the Oldham Archives off-site store and packing them into a giant box on a pallet. When I was cleaning these volumes earlier this year, the work was powered by swearing. Rate Books from the Oldham Archives collections at the off-site store waiting to be packed onto pallets. At this point, the DeepStore crew had packed 360 and were about to palletise another 70. Stephen and Jay putting the Rate Books onto shelves in the new Oldham Archives store. 433 Rate Books neatly placed on shelves on the new mobile racking at Oldham Archives.
October 4, 2025 at 7:35 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Work news: we had our Open Day today and the Mayor of Oldham cut a ribbon to declare us open, before stopping to chat to visitors. We had #archives, #maps and #photographs out for visitors to browse and I ran tours of the archives store.
The Worshipful Mayor and Mayoress of Oldham speak to a visitor to the Oldham Archives Open Day in the new search room. There are old maps on a table in front of them and another visitor looks on from the opposite side of the table. Visitors to the Oldham Archives Open Day enjoying a display of historical photographs in the new meeting room. The photographs are on tables surrounded by orange chairs. Visitors to the Oldham Archives Open Day looking at a selection of historical maps and talking to a member of the archives team. A view down an aisle in the roller racking in the new store at Oldham Archives, with boxes stacked on shelves to the left and books stored on shelves to the right.
September 27, 2025 at 4:59 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Two hours and twenty miles separate these photographs.
Oldham 4.30pm
Stretford 6.30pm
#TheSky #clouds
A view of Oldham from level 6 of the Spindles Shopping Centre car park, looking at the backs of buildings on Union Street with Phoenix House to the left and the hills around Mossley in the distance. The sky is filled with clouds, cirrus and cumulus, with small patches of blue. Dark grey sky above a row of terraced houses with sunlight from the west falling on the tiled roofs. The sky is entirely filled with clouds. It looks like a storm is rolling in.
September 9, 2025 at 6:20 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Hush now, I'm going to be reading. I've retrieved
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social's new novel from the neighbours'.
#BookSky #EWSY
Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox in all its glory on a cushion made from Joan Charnley's mid-century Stars and Stripes fabric design. The book cover and cushion colours go perfectly together.
September 9, 2025 at 4:46 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social's new novel Everything Will Swallow You is trapped in my neighbours' house and they've gone out, so now I have to wait before I can dive in, like I'm an adult who understands deferred gratification, or something.
#BookSky #EWSY #AbsoluteScenes
A slightly crumpled missed delivery card that is a symbol of frustration as the neighbours at No 12 have gone out, I have 13 pages left of the novel I'm currently reading, and have been waiting a long time for the book the packet contains. It's so tantalisingly close. I'm going to have to go and cook tea to distract myself.
September 8, 2025 at 5:51 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Oh!
I've been waiting for this for a long time and now it's almost here.
@dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social
Once upon a time there was a writer who wrote an exceptional novel about life on the edge of a moor, a moor on the border of everything. The writer wrote another novel, about llamas and love and humanity and belonging. Everything was going well until the writer's publisher collapsed and turned out not to be the radical challenge to conventional publishing that everyone thought. The writer's seventh book and third novel for that publisher might have been lost, but the writer knew the novel was the best he'd ever written. And so it came to pass that a swift carried the novel out on the winds and delivered it into the hands of those who loved what the writer wrote. (The picture is of a shipping notification for Tom Cox's new novel Everything Will Swallow You which will be available in all the best independent bookshops and online via Bookshop.org and Blackwell's very soon. If you've got this far, you should definitely buy it.)
September 5, 2025 at 9:59 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Sapphire/Sapphy/Inspector Sapphy of the Back Yard/Duchess of Chatterton/Chatsworth/The Chatsworth House/Chat Show/Sapphy Longlegs/Longlegs/Legs/Sapphychops/Chops/Peep/Gary/The New Shmoo/Sappha Nadal/The Sapphinator/Maud
Sapphire/Sapphy/Inspector Sapphy of the Back Yard/Duchess of Chatterton/Chatsworth/The Chatsworth House/Chat Show/Sapphy Longlegs/Longlegs/Legs/Sapphychops/Chops/Peep/Gary/The New Shmoo/Sappha Nadal/The Sapphinator/Maud
September 4, 2025 at 7:04 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
8. The display about the removal of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol in 2020, part of the exhibits about Bristol's radical activist history at M Shed.
Placards held up by protesters at the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol in 2020, reading Bristol has a lot to answer for, Racism is a dangerous pandemic too, Bristol was built on Slavery, and No justice No peace. A visitor watches a video of the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol in 2020, at the far end of a case containing the statue lying on its back and sprayed with paint by protesters. Text panel containing words by Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees: I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the Colston statue, what happened to it and what happened around it. Its place of honour in the middle of Bristol was objectionable to me. I'm Jamaican. He may have traded one of my ancestors. Having said that, as Mayor of the city, I cannot condone people taking ropes to haul it down. And yet, at the same time, I cannot help but see and feel the historical poetry in the way the statue was treated that day. I do think some people have failed to understand, or perhaps chosen to overlook, the dynamic that exists between me, as a mixed race black man from a working class family, and Mayor, and what happened to the statue. It's complicated. It was an event that offers the opportunity to peel the layers back for deeper insights. For example, the statue was pulled down by four white people in a pre-meditated act, in public, in full view of police, on camera. They were all charged with criminal damage and opted to plead not guilty, taking their cases to the Crown Court. Their defences included that their sensibilities were offended by the statue, and they criticised the city's elected black leadership for not doing enough on racism. So I ask whether four black people would have had the confidence to take such a gamble and, if they had, would they have had the same likelihood of a not guilty verdict? If not, then what we saw was an exercise in middle-class white privilege, alongside a declaration of anti-racism. A number of things can be true at the same time. We have seen that dramatic symbolic acts can be important catalysts for change. For example, the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 led to two race relations acts. But when symbolic acts are not accompanied by programmes of concrete action, they can be more about satisfying the immediate emotional needs of members of privileged groups, than about changing the actual political and economic status of people in oppressed groups.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
7. GRIOT interventions in the exhibits about Bristol's involvement in the trafficking of enslaved people from Africa to the Caribbean and Americas at M Shed.
Entrance to the Rebel Curators' GRIOT interventions with the message "Step into a site of immense pain and resilience" above the doorway. The Rebel Curators are of African, Caribbean and Black British heritage and have challenged the prevailing narrative of the slave trade, replacing offensive and harmful terminology and suggesting different objects that can tell a more positive story about enslaved people. It's powerful stuff. An intervention in memory of African ancestors sacrificed during the deadly cultivation of sugar, as a challenge to the narrative about John Pinney, who made his money from trade in sugar and African people. The Rebel Curators are of African, Caribbean and Black British heritage and have challenged the prevailing narrative of the slave trade, replacing offensive and harmful terminology and suggesting different objects that can tell a more positive story about enslaved people. It's powerful stuff. Detail from an artwork to represent the people and nations who were in Africa before colonialism and enslavement. The Rebel Curators are of African, Caribbean and Black British heritage and have challenged the prevailing narrative of the slave trade, replacing offensive and harmful terminology and suggesting different objects that can tell a more positive story about enslaved people. It's powerful stuff. Graphic text panel covering over an object which demeans Black people. It is possible to look round the sticker to see the object, but the text explains why the object is offensive and suggests objects that offer more positive representation of Black lives in the Americas. The Rebel Curators are of African, Caribbean and Black British heritage and have challenged the prevailing narrative of the slave trade, replacing offensive and harmful terminology and suggesting different objects that can tell a more positive story about enslaved people. It's powerful stuff.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
6. Castle Bridge at night
Castle Bridge snaking over the Avon, lit up in gold, against an ink blue night sky clear of clouds, with street lights and illuminated buildings in the background.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
5. Art at the Arnolfini
Enjoy Yourself - a creative and co-created response to the Arnolfini's archive of Art Education initiatives from the 1970s to the 2020s. Unpainted Landscape - the Arnolfini's recreation of David Neville's 1987 piece co-created with people living in Bristol and seeking asylum. "Let me mend your broken bones" from Dana Awartani's Standing By The Ruins - the artist has torn holes in fabric to represent locations in Syria, Palestine, Libya and other Middle Eastern/North African/Arabic countries destroyed by conflict and cultural cleansing, and then darned the holes to represent healing. "Standing By The Ruins III" from Dana Awartani's Standing By The Ruins exhibition - the artist has collaborated with a collective of craftsmen from Riyadh who specialise in adobe earth restoration to rebuild the intricate Ottoman-influenced floor design of Gaza’s Hamam al-Sammara, believed to have been destroyed by the ongoing bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli military.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
4. A seagull on the head of William III in Queens Park.
If you can't fight, wear a big seagull. William III was apparently keen on throwing himself into the fray. He was also keen on bludgeoning Catholics, most infamously at the Battle of the Boyne and the Massacre of Glencoe. Here he is memorialised in bronze in Queens Park, Bristol, dressed as a Roman, to commemorate Bristol's support of the act of parliament that confirmed William and Mary's succession to the British crown. Bristol has a complex history.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
3. Defunct gubbins inside the Redcliffe Bascule Bridge control room.
Defunct equipment seen through the window of one of two control rooms on the Redcliffe Bascule Bridge in Bristol. I love stuff like this—history languishing in front of us. The bridge opened in 1939, was bombed and repaired in 1942 and then refurbished in 1993.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
2. The Granary on Welsh Back
Now a restaurant, The Granary was built as a grain store in 1869, became a rock club 100 years later, and served as the exterior of the pub where Delboy fell through the bar in Only Fools and Horses.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Top things from a few days in #Bristol: A Thread
1. Massive Attack on the Avon
Rowers in a boat geographically appropriately named Massive Attack. Presence of Tricky unconfirmed.
September 1, 2025 at 6:02 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
We were away for a few days. Alt text describes how this moment of peace came to be.
#SapphireDuchessOfChatterton #TheChatsworthHouse
Our black cat Sapphire, Duchess of Chatterton, relaxing on her Poang after a morning of shouting in the car on the way back from the cattery, shouting while wandering through the house, shouting from the garden and on the way in from the garden, and shouting while being brushed. Shouting is hard work. Being beautiful is hard work. She must rest now.
September 1, 2025 at 4:10 PM
dustystacks.bsky.social
Two glorious items I have received as gifts bought by Mr Hicks from @raremags.bsky.social. I have other examples, but these are my favourites.
Noma In Kyoto Journal Vol.1 and Catnip Magazine Vol.1
August 15, 2025 at 11:31 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
What the actual fuck? That CEO was Dan Kieran who is apparently sorry that all this has happened, according to a statement in this Observer article observer.co.uk/news/busines...
Extract from an Observer report into Unbound in which Aaron Reynolds reveals his royalty statements were going to a former residence of Unbound's then-CEO Dan Kieran.
August 9, 2025 at 11:54 AM
dustystacks.bsky.social
As a supporter, that change meant I lost access to info about books I'd pledged for pre-2023, including e-book downloads. There was no warning about that loss of access. My theory now: they were moving towards a focus on tech. AI and gaming were mentioned in the viability statement in March 2025.
Viability statement for Boundless IP Ltd from Archna Sharma highlighted to show focus on IT.
August 9, 2025 at 11:27 AM