James
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jamesrhodes.bsky.social
James
@jamesrhodes.bsky.social
Grumpy and hectic, dyspeptic dyslexic.

Writer / Teacher.

I block sales pitches and the slightest hint of intolerance.
Someone has dumped a large teddybear in the graveyard.

It is not by a child's grave. Nor a recent grave. It's just there propped up a tree stump.

I hope there's not a corpse inside it.
October 13, 2025 at 7:23 PM
There is a cafė in Colwyn Bay where people just go and make art. Great music too.

It feels like it should be in a large bohemian city.

Ink, Colwyn Bay - my kind of place.
October 12, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Turn to page 175.
June 12, 2025 at 9:38 AM
April 26, 2025 at 8:16 AM
Dressed in bright yellow
A congregation of mushrooms
Keep wake to their friend

#dailyhaikuprompt (mushroom)
#haiku
#poetry
April 2, 2025 at 8:22 PM
Spent mussel shells
Rattle on an unused ramp
Like unnoticed lives

#dailyhaikuprompt (high tide)

Photograph: David Dixon
March 27, 2025 at 9:53 AM
March 20, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Living flowerless
Potted in circumstance
The orchid and I

#dalyhaikuprompt (orchid)
March 9, 2025 at 12:42 PM
I made this Voltaire / Doge meme in 2016, when I had no idea that culture would devolve so much that a previously sane nation would name a brutal Randian public service raid after the funny dog, and people would just be like, yeah we accept this as reality. Voltaire Doge somehow knew.
March 8, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Repost with the first album you bought with your own money.

£1.25 an hour hand washing dishes for 6 hours was a reasonable exchange for art of this quality. Also, glad I was too cheap to buy the newer album I actually wanted, because it's good but isn't as good. Gavan Whelan's drums make this 🔥
February 27, 2025 at 11:40 AM
The most interesting character in the Terminator franchise is Shirley Manson's T-1001 in Sarah Connor Chronicles. Which, if you haven't seen season 2, is the most interesting reflection on AI in TV history and all around great.
February 26, 2025 at 10:16 AM
It's been four years since my novella The Whispering Marsh was published and I'm still fiercely proud of it.

Set on the coast of Wirral: Blackwood style folk horror, with a little creature feature slung in.

Find it here
UK
amzn.eu/d/5Puu49y
US
a.co/d/1GXni8B

#northern #folkhorror #horror
February 19, 2025 at 11:42 PM
I was teaching this poem this morning, and it hit me so hard I was winded.

The Geography Teacher by Brian Patten

The teacher who introduced me to Brian Patten was his friend and a poet of less renown. This is him. This is so many of the best teachers I've know. This can be any of us.

#edusky
February 16, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Hammond: Barbara Meredith, she's the Black Whip!

Baxter: She couldn't be! The Black Whip's got to be a man! He's outshot us, outrode us, and outfought us, stopped us at every turn!

Zorro's Black Whip, 1944
February 7, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Monkey King and the Serpent's Sting

Monkey King meets The Dragon Warrior in this thrilling and funny MG adventure, where the mischievous Monkey and his friends travel to ancient Judea, battling legendary creatures and dark forces to save the world from a power-hungry cobra.

#2025pit #MG #Fantasy
January 27, 2025 at 6:40 PM
I can't let things be this way. We can be wonderful. We can be magnificent. We can turn this shit around.

- TANK GIRL
January 25, 2025 at 9:24 AM
January 20, 2025 at 5:55 PM
How I learned that witches can't cross running water.

From, Tim and the Witches by Sheila K McCullough

#ukkidlit
January 15, 2025 at 3:44 PM
Hamilton Square is more than usually Dickensian today.
January 7, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Multi-modal learning has very little evidence to back it.

Look to cognitive load theory if you want something that actually helps students.
January 7, 2025 at 11:07 AM
"The end" has to be the most gratifying and least accurate two words you can write in any first draft.

#writingcommunity
November 30, 2024 at 12:28 PM
The reason I am not writing right now.
November 25, 2024 at 8:55 PM
Just a couple. I'd probably add most of the givens to this too Watership Down The Hobbit, Narnia et al.
November 22, 2024 at 8:37 AM
My #kidlit shout of the month would be The River Spirit by Lucy Strange which I think came out in June. A similar vibe to The Water Babies but with beautiful sparse and accessible prose.

A quiet wonder.
November 21, 2024 at 4:44 PM
That cancelled TV show you'll never stop thinking about...

(Or quietly raging at the idiocy of cancelling)
November 17, 2024 at 11:38 AM