Jo Lloyd 🌍🐎
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jolloyds.bsky.social
Jo Lloyd 🌍🐎
@jolloyds.bsky.social
1.3K followers 990 following 830 posts
Writer
The Earth Thy Great Exchequer Ready Lies UK
Something Wonderful US
BBC National Short Story Award #bbcnssa
O Henry
She/her
Ally
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jolloyds.bsky.social
Sparrowhawk spent about 3 hours to achieve this degree of pluffiness
Sparrowhawk showing its impressive Bridget Riley breast feathers as it preens its tail Time to do something with those breast feathers More preening The finished article
November 13, 2025 at 5:26 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
The finished article
Old black and white photo showing war memorial in centre of street, with a pub on one side and a bank and a butcher on the other
November 11, 2025 at 4:41 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
A model of Rhayader war memorial in the workshop during construction of the monument in 1923 - sculptor Benjamin Lloyd, builder Morgan Lloyd

You can see hands and feet and so on hanging on the walls in the background
Old black and white photo showing a large model of a war memorial in the workshop; memorial takes the form of a clock tower with a door in the front
November 11, 2025 at 2:04 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Another from last November, when there was sun - I am most pleased with the incidental cormorant
Sun sinking into the horizon; above it a cormorant in silhouette
November 10, 2025 at 5:02 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
The sun didn't come up today so here's one from last November
Between slatey clouds and a slatey sea a slice of orange light with distant hills
November 9, 2025 at 5:27 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Where can we live but days?
Mouse leaning, multi-coloured wares in hand, money tin labelled 1€ round neck
November 2, 2025 at 6:52 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Well good luck with that
A pdf of sheet music bearing the legend "This appears to be a long document. Save time by reading a summary using AI Assistant."
October 31, 2025 at 5:57 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
A kind friend sent me a photo of @curiousfoxbooks.bsky.social in Berlin - I've never been to Berlin but I can tell it's a bookshop with excellent taste
Display of paperbacks for sale including The Earth Thy Great Exchequer Ready Lies sidling up to The Dream of the Celt by Mario Vargas Llosa
October 30, 2025 at 11:42 AM
jolloyds.bsky.social
😉
Windhover hovering
October 16, 2025 at 5:15 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
I saw this morning morning's hedgehog

I asked where it lived but it didn't know and it had no label sown into its hem so I moved it off the path to the edge of the gorse and watched it trundle away into the spiny place
Impressively skirted hedgehog giving me the side eye
October 16, 2025 at 11:49 AM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Friend has made a zine about some of the big things
Cover of "Life is short & also pidgeons, Swedish cinammon buns & fear of flying" illustrated by plump upright pigeon with all-knowing eye
September 26, 2025 at 11:41 AM
jolloyds.bsky.social
This very GLC Festival appears in the story Adrian Duncan & I wrote for @scratchbooks.bsky.social's "Duets" collection - lovely to see the posters here from @michael954.bsky.social and @lccmunicipal.bsky.social :
A paragraph "The Girl Chewing Gum" in "Duets": In the summer of 1984, not long after they met, Jackie went with Rosa to one of the GLC’s free festivals on the South Bank. The Smiths were playing, Billy Bragg, Black Uhuru. Every single person there was in agreement about everything: reclaiming the night and freeing Nelson Mandela and ending Cruise missiles. It was like visiting the future, where everyone would know what was good and how to achieve it, and the music would be glorious.
September 25, 2025 at 10:55 AM
jolloyds.bsky.social
The history of a piece of bread - from Louisa Jebb's By Desert Ways to Baghdad (1908) (X is Louisa's travelling companion, anonymised to protect her titled identity)
"We must leave some for the men," she said, with a look of apology, as she put the spoon down. She picked up a piece of leathery native bread and started chewing it. "Try a cigarette," I said sympathetically. I could not find it in my heart to tell her the history of that identical piece of bread, which I had been following with some interest for several days. It was always turning up, and I recognised it by a black, burnt mark resembling a figure 8. It had first appeared on the scene early in the week; we had been enjoying a lavish spread of chicken legs and dried figs, and with wasteful squander I had rejected it as being less palatable than other bits. The men had tried it after me, pinching it with their grimy fingers, but being unsatisfied with the consistency they had thrown it, along with other scraps, into a bag containing miscellaneous cooking utensils. The next day it had appeared to swell the aspect of our diminishing supply and had been left on the ground. But as we rode away Hassan's economical spirit overcame him; he dismounted again and slipped it into his pocket, where it lay in close proximity to various articles not calculated to increase the savouriness of its flavour. I was determined to see its end, and when X laid down half—no doubt meaning it for my share—I threw it on the fire. "It's hardly the time to waste good food," said X. The cook picked it out, blew the ashes off, and rubbed it with his greasy sleeve. He offered it to me. "Eat it yourself," I said magnanimously, "I have had enough." But he wrapped it carefully in one of the dirty linen bags and put it on one side. "Jarin" (To-morrow), he said.
September 20, 2025 at 12:26 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
For some inexplicable reason, Jerome Bixby's terrifying 1953 story "It's a Good Life" came to mind (again) when I looked at the Windsor Castle news coverage
They ate dinner, the candles lighting their smiling faces, and ate it all right down to the last delicious drop of gravy. They complimented Mom and Aunt Amy on the roast beef, and the peas and carrots, and the tender corn on the cob. The corn hadn’t come from the Fremont’s cornfield, naturally—everybody knew what was out there; and the field was going to weeds. Then they polished off the dessert—homemade ice cream and cookies. And then they sat back, in the flickering light of the candles, and chatted, waiting for television. There never was a lot of mumbling on television night—everybody came and had a good dinner at the Fremonts’, and that was nice, and afterwards there was television and nobody really thought much about that, it just had to be put up with. So it was a pleasant enough get-together, aside from your having to watch what you said just as carefully as you always did everyplace. If a dangerous thought came into your mind, you just started mumbling, even right in the middle of a sentence. When you did that, the others just ignored you until you felt happier again and stopped. Anthony liked television nights. He had done only two or three awful things on television nights in the whole past year.
September 18, 2025 at 12:01 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
"One night he began dreaming in Latin." From Jón Kalman Stefánsson's "Summer Light, And Then Comes the Night"

This paragraph, the start of the first chapter proper, breaks all the rules and I love it for that
One night he began dreaming in Latin. Tu igitur nihil vides? It took a long time, however, to figure out what language it was; he himself thought that it was just made up, many things dwell in dreams, etc. In those years, things looked considerably different here in the village, we moved a bit slower and the Co-op held everything together. He, on the other hand, was the director of the Knitting Company, having recently turned thirty. He had everything going for him, was married to a woman so beautiful that the mere sight of her made some men feel peculiarly bashful, they had two children and we expect that one of them, Davíð, will appear later on these pages. The young director seemed born for victory; his family lived in the biggest house in the village, he drove a Range Rover, had his suits custom-made, we were all grey in comparison with him, but then he began dreaming in Latin. It was the old doctor who finally determined what language it was; sadly, though, he died shortly afterwards, when Guðjón’s damned dog leaped at him, barking, and his old heart gave out. We shot that cursed dog the very next day; if only we had done it sooner. Guðjón threatened to sue us, but then got another dog that proved to be even worse, some of us have tried to run it over, but the creature is quick on its feet. The old doctor knew next to nothing in Latin, just a few words and the names of vital organs, but that was enough when the director managed to recall the aforementioned phrase.
September 13, 2025 at 8:32 AM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Lovely - reminded me of Scarlett Hooft Graafland's wonderful "Journey" - www.escapeintolife.com/photography/...
A line of antlers emerges from - or descends into - a flat seascape of ice and cloud, heading towards the horizon
September 8, 2025 at 8:00 AM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Birthwort fruit - one of the few local sources of body-snatching pod people from outer space #wildflowerhour #seedheads
Birthwort fruit like a very small melon
September 7, 2025 at 7:11 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Rock samphire (with some rather sad sea pinks in the background) #seedheads #wildflowerhour
Rock samphire, sea pinks, plus a bit of rock and sea
September 7, 2025 at 7:05 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
"The horse was the first thing you looked at ... but it was the large 3 – nearly the same colour as the horse – in the foreground that your eyes really fixed on: once you’d seen it, it was somehow the pivot of the painting."

#SundaySentence Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves @rachelmalik.bsky.social
Train Landscape by Eric Ravilious
September 7, 2025 at 5:17 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Also in this issue, Thomas Pierce's extraordinary "Honey is a State of Mind", including this plane journey

Many writers, many editors, might have cut this para under the Chekhov's gun rule - but I love its burbling richness, like the story is so full of goodness some of it is escaping at the edges
On one side of me was a man arriving home from the war. His name was Lt. Brian Murphy, and in his backpack he had a small box with a ring in it. He told me that the moment he saw his girlfriend at the airport he was going to propose. He said it was important, if you found the right girl, to "lock it in" before she got any better ideas. On the other side was a woman playing video games on her phone the entire flight. She was visiting her brother, who was dying of brain cancer. She said she had conflicted feelings about his death because he'd been an asshole for most of his life and had even cheated her out of some money.
August 26, 2025 at 12:55 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
I love a long sentence, and "In Nature" features some beauties (Real-Feel is a kind of advanced AI support cat)
I heard Real-Feel outside my door one afternoon while I was reading a couple of old essays by this guy Emerson, one on self-reliance and another on the soul, and I was getting pretty into it, his idea of an Over-soul, which I imagined as a giant moss I might rest my mind in, as well as my heart, which I’d touched with the help of Lucia’s cold fingers, and my pubis and my toes. I wanted to believe that it was real, that within and around all of us, life smooshed gently, flowing in and out of some spiritual haven that welcomed everyone, no application required, each cell breathing into the lungs of a forest, like the ones in apps to prevent suicide.
August 25, 2025 at 5:57 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Every section of Jon McGregor's "Reservoir 13" starts with a variation on this New Year sentence - it's a lovely subtle thing in a book full of lovely subtle things #SundaySentence
"At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks in the rain, and thunder in the next valley. The rain broke over the hill like a wave and blew straight into people's faces."
August 24, 2025 at 1:03 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
Visitors getting ready to leave
Swallows on a wire: the parent, with wings outstretched, dropping by to offer some nasty insect carcass to its yowling wide-mouthed babies
August 20, 2025 at 6:03 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
A beautiful canine paragraph from 'Madame Bovary's Greyhound' by Karen Russell (first published in Zoetrope, then in her collection 'Orange World')
In the late afternoon she paused to drink water from large cups in the mossy roots of unfamiliar trees. She was miles from her old life. Herons sailed over her head, their broad wings flat as palms, stroking her from scalp to tail at an immense distance, and the dog’s mind became empty and smooth. Skies rolled through her chest; her small rib cage and her iron-gray pelt enclosed a blue without limit. She was free.
August 19, 2025 at 7:00 PM
jolloyds.bsky.social
A gorgeous paragraph from @vickymackenzie.bsky.social 's novel with the very long name
Once the golden light of the sun sinks away, the colour is taken out of things, and the world fades one object at a time. First, the opposite street becomes nothing but a shadow. Then the hazel tree picks up blackness. In winter, it forms a tracery of branches and twigs against the gloaming sky; in summer the leaves lose their distinction from one another. Soon you cannot tell what is leaf, and what is brick, and what is cloud obliterating the last remnants of the deepening heavens.
August 18, 2025 at 12:05 PM