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swithuncooper.bsky.social
Swithun
@swithuncooper.bsky.social
110 followers 120 following 410 posts
Stay-at-home mother of none
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swithuncooper.bsky.social
This is how I find out that my mother has bought a tractor??
WhatsApp screengrab. My mum says: "Just to let you know, when I taxed the tractor for another year, I also signed up for organ or tissue donation. Not sure what of me will be useful, but they are welcome to it once I am clinically dead." Underneath, a reply from my sister: "OK mum" with the skull emoji.
November 18, 2025 at 4:42 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Suddenly change of plans, sorry Tuesday
Vol 3 of 'On the Calculation of Volume' by Solvej Balle, lying on top of a pile of work that will not be getting done
November 17, 2025 at 6:19 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
I'm not teaching until 2pm today 😇
Coffee, glasses, new copies of Jack the Modernist by Robert Glück and Bad Language by So Mayer. Jealousy is a disease please try to be happy for me
November 13, 2025 at 11:53 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Back on the train, bébé! It's ANNE UBERSFELD week. I love this essay, it combines the two things students love: deep reliance on a since-discredited psychologist, and untranslatable sanskrit.
Highlighted essay text and lecture notes for Anne Ubersfeld's landmark semiotics essay 'The Pleasure of the Spectator'. Also my spectacles.
November 3, 2025 at 12:29 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
An autumn afternoon and time to watch:
Poster for Ingmar Bergman's film Autumn Sonata. Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman both looking miserable, neither quite meeting the other's gaze.
October 26, 2025 at 4:27 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Ate *two* home-cooked meals from this yesterday. At one point Barbara claims that chocolate "relieves high blood pressure", "has a toning effect on the kidneys" and should be eaten with ambergris by women who are "cold by nature".
Barbara Cartland's 'The Romance of Food': a pink hardback cookbook showing a dish with hearts around its rim, a blood-red sauce under a heart-shaped meringue topped with a rose, attended by porcelain cherubs and garlanded with white trumpet flowers. What the fuck Barbara A page from 'The Romance of Food': a mushroom stew being watched over by porcelain figurines of old-timey soldiers, with plucked tomatoes set in mirror image either side of the dish. No I don't know either Look sorry this one's beyond my abilities. An explosion of flowers provides the background for a sort of iced lemon shortbread tower, decorated with slivers of kiwi fruit, next to a plate of.... cherries under pastry with cream arranged like a fleur-de-lis? Two porcelain figurines of ladies in crinoline watch over it guardedly, and a small porcelain dog is sticking its arse high in the air, as if to happily break wind, but fortunately not in the direction of the food. Pink crystals like standing stones in a druid circle looming menacingly over a dish that shows five strips of (uncooked?) chicken in some kind of rose-pink sauce. Pink flowers are balanced on the dishes rim. Beneath this, the text: "PINK CHICKEN. Chicken with pink sauce, chicken in pink quartz, and the pink flush of your cheeks when he says 'I love you.'" Did i make him love me when I served him uncooked chicken, Barbara? Have you got love and food poisoning confused again?
October 5, 2025 at 7:03 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
News continually dreadful so let's all take a deep breath and look at my mum's puppy's ridiculous ears. The flamingo is her favourite but as yet is not named.
Small Welsh corgi in black, brown and white, labouring beneath a pair of sticky-up ears each roughly the size of Swansea, chewing on a stuffed toy flamingo.
September 24, 2025 at 6:05 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Performatively bought these in charity shops last week. But which shall I performatively read in the 4+ hours that I'll be sitting around getting my hair performatively bleached today? Help! (I'm leaning towards Hesse or Isherwood, but the change in weather has given me an appetite for Gaskell.)
Six second hand books lined up: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, The Treasure Chest by Johann Peter Hebel, Tales from Ovid by Ted Hughes, Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood, Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford, The Prodigy by Hermann Hesse.
August 29, 2025 at 7:27 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Pen experiences Andy Goldsworthy.
A path made of branches on the floor of an Art gallery, that ends with a sunrise/starburst of thinner branches set out on the large white wall. In front of it, seen from behind, a man in a drifty sheer cardigan in silent contemplation.
August 20, 2025 at 6:29 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
I know I don't have any reach here - but if someone who sees this does! - immigration enforcement vans and officers spotted east off Brick Lane, heading (I think) towards Whitechapel. Stay safe, tell your friends to stay safe, know your rights, and no borders xx
Resist Immigration Raids leaflet saying: "If immigration officers come to your home or work... you do not have to answer any questions. You do not have to let them in. They can only enter with your consent, a warrant, or assistant director's letter unless the building is licensed to sell alcohol or late night food/drink. Try to leave if you are not under arrest. DONT STOP AND TALK - JUST GO." A leaflet saying "See a raid? Film immigration officers and police. If someone is being detained, check with them first or only film officers. Challenge the officers - why are they questioning specific people? Tell people around you what's happening. Call your friends. Tweet @AntiRaids to get word out. BAIL FOR IMMIGRATION DETAINEES 0207 456 9750. SOAS DETAINEE SUPPORT 07438 407 570"
August 11, 2025 at 9:01 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
'What It Is' has rescued me several times from creative death. I'm no longer sure how many times I've read it. A masterpiece
August 7, 2025 at 7:12 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Back in the midlands (bad) to visit my mum's new dog (excellent)
August 2, 2025 at 8:01 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
MORE THAN POSSIBLE as Spa Road rail station was once diagonally opposite St James's Church, so if his train stopped there he'd have even had a few minutes to contemplate it.

(Two images, as it was rebuilt a few hundred yards away, but both were in viewing distance of the church.)
August 2, 2025 at 11:06 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Look it's simple we're just sexier and cooler than most people
Three hot babes holding signs in the trans pride colours saying 'trans men are men', 'trans athletes belong in sport', and 'trans rights are human rights' Three hot babes holding signs that say 'trans men are men', 'protect trans kids', and 'trans athletes belong in sport'
July 27, 2025 at 7:18 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
A protest banner showing Keir Starmer in a thatcher wig, saying 'The only transition Labour supports is AlStarmer to Thatcher'
July 26, 2025 at 2:28 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
A page from Lynda Barry's book 'WHAT IT IS' showing illustrations of cats, birds and jellyfish, and little sections reading: "what is playing? A kid who is never allowed to play will be (a) fine; (b) what is your best guess? WHY? I read: the book is brought alive. I stop reading and the book maintains its potential for aliveness. Making things. Making something into something else. Something tells me. Daydreaming. Planning, reliving bad moments, reenacting conversations, free form fretting, fighting off sleep urge, musing over other people's actions, wishing, regretting, swarming thoughts. Is playing bringing something alive? It was brought alive somehow. Not 'to life' but alive. Interaction and reciprocity require at least two parties. You play with something and something plays with you too. Even if it's only a passive thing. A different state of mind. Concentration. Playing is about not knowing."
July 14, 2025 at 1:58 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
LYNDA 💕
An eight-panel cartoon of a girl sitting, reading and thinking, while animals and monsters glow in the darkness of her imagination. The captions say: "ROLLING FORWARD ALONG IN TIME. Something happens to my thinking when I start to draw - it becomes more like listening than formulating. While I move my pen, I hear sentences, like this one for example. Spoken internally from one part of me to another. Spoken and listened to - heard and recorded, but not thought over much or at all at first. When I keep my pen moving it is not a yes or no situation."
July 14, 2025 at 5:44 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Dealing with my silly little creative crisis by re-reading Lynda Barry's 'WHAT IT IS', a book that can almost instantly bring me to tears *and* make me feel like art, play and dreaming are possible again.
A collaged page from an art book, showing colourful illustrations of little monsters and sea creatures and magazine cuttings of cats. Floating between these are blocks of text saying: WHAT ARE TOYS? Outfits for inner space creatures. How do they come into being? Do kids need toys? Why? DID YOU EVER HAVE A TOY THAT KNEW YOU? The same toy is not the same for anybody else: true/false. Is there a toy you still think about? CAN A TOY EXIST WITHOUT A PERSON?
July 13, 2025 at 3:41 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Enjoyed the 'Unearthed' exhibition at the British Library this evening. Great artefacts, and some wonderful rooms on radical gardening.
A poster designed to look like a psychedelic 70s album cover, showing a pair of hands lifting up a sheet of tended lawn to reveal a variety of plant life, under which are the words "if nothing is eating your plants then your garden is not part of the ecosystem". In front of this stands an old Victorian manual mower.
July 3, 2025 at 8:07 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
'Failing and Flying' by Jack Gilbert, from his 2005 collection Refusing Heaven.
'Failing and Flying' by Jack Gilbert. Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew. It's the same when love comes to an end, or the marriage fails and people say they knew it would never last, that everybody said it would never work. That she was old enough to know better. But anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Like being there by that summer ocean on the other side of the island while love was fading out of her, the stars burning so extravagantly those nights that anyone could tell you they would never last. Every morning she was asleep in my bed like a visitation, the gentleness in her like antelope standing in the dawn mist. Each afternoon I watched her coming back through the hot stony field after swimming, the sea light behind her and the huge sky on the other side of that. Listened to her while we ate lunch. How can they say the marriage failed? Like the people who came back from Provence (when it was Provence) and said it was pretty but the food was greasy. I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell, but just coming to the end of his triumph.
June 22, 2025 at 9:05 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
IMPORTANT: I have encountered physical perfection on the Jubilee line
Cute tiny dog riding in a Celine wicker bag Cute tiny dog in a bag looking up
May 23, 2025 at 10:32 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
Writing has been rough going lately, but reading has been DREADFUL. And then! I remembered I can just re-read the hits. Look at these two, gazing wisely in what can only be the right direction.
The front covers of 'Demian' by Hermann Hesse and 'The Mulberry Tree' by Elizabeth Bowen, the front covers of which both show faces in profile staring with engagement off to the side, beyond the book cover.
May 15, 2025 at 2:53 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
STOP TRYING TO APPEAL TO BIGOTS AND JUST HAVE SOME FUCKING PRINCIPLES YOU TEDIOUS BAG OF OLD YOGHURT
Screenshot of The Guardian headline, saying, 'Immigration: English test among range of Labour measures to control immigration. Keir Starmer says system will be "tightened up" in all areas, following sharp rise in support for Reform UK in elections.'
May 12, 2025 at 5:01 AM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
CONCLAVE: A Spike Lee Joint
Screen grab of an Instagram post by Spike Lee, showing a picture of the new pope with the accompanying text: "The 1st POPE from The UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Born in Chicago, Illinois. And For My NEW YAWK KNICKS FANS His Alma Mater Is VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY (BRUNSON, HART And BRIDGES Won NCAA Rings At VILLANOVA)What a HOLY BLESSING. THE KNICKERBOCKERS ARE GONNA WIN THE 2024-2005 NBA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP. IT IS DIVINITY. GOD BLESS. And Dat's Da HOLY TRUTHM RUTH. YA DIG? SHO NUFF"
May 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM
swithuncooper.bsky.social
FauxHo naming bullshit aside, I loathe this building with every fibre of my being. Thread....
May 8, 2025 at 3:45 PM