Folklore Twitcher

#FungiFriday. Sulphur Tuft growing in little patches hidden by bracken and wood debris. Taken in November on Ashdown Forest. Happy Friday everyone.

This male blackbird is visiting our garden, staring into space, & allowing me to get very close to video him

Bert the Bold, the new owner of our garden senses there is something wrong, & is not chasing him off

Anyone bird experts know what could be wrong?

🤣😂😅

My photo shows a museum display with colourful Minoan pottery cups arranged on three clear shelves, one above the other. These cups, known as Kamares Ware, are from Phaistos, Crete. They were made in palace workshops, c. 1800-1700 BC. The cups range in shape and size from conic and cylindrical cups (top and middle shelves) to hemispherical and carinated shaped cups (bottom shelf). They are decorated with multi-coloured geometric motifs; with spirals and swirls painted in red and white pigment on black.

Sipping my coffee ☕️ and thinking about these marvellous Minoan cups!

They look so modern it’s incredible to think they were made during the Bronze Age some 3,800 years ago!

Heraklion Archaeological Museum, Crete. 📷 by me

#Archaeology

More relevant than ever.

A brown and white dog with a concerned look sits up straight and looks into the camera. On the floor next to them is an animal skin rug with matching coloring to theirs.

sometimes all it takes is a little subtle messaging to improve your pet’s behavior

Today's plans

“A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.”

(Arthur Conan Doyle “The Hound of the Baskervilles”)

🎨 Sidney Paget (1901)

#bookwormsat #booksky #bookillustration

Maud Lewis sits at a small table in a brightly decorated room, smiling warmly while holding a paintbrush and a small object in her hands. She wears a floral apron over a green dress and a headscarf. Around her are painting supplies, including jars, brushes, and a dark container on the table. The walls and nearby surfaces are covered with colorful folk-art paintings of flowers, animals, and simple scenes, filling the small space with bright reds, yellows, greens, and blues. Sunlight from the right side illuminates her face and the cluttered painting area.

If there was a surface, Maud Lewis painted on it.
She turned her small home into a colourful work of art.
While she was born with birth defects, she never let that stop her from capturing the beauty she saw in the world.
This is her story.

🧵 1/12

In Chinese #folklore, a cat battling a snake is called Dragon-Tiger Battle (龍虎鬥), a clash of cunning and courage.
One tale tells of a snake cut in half after losing to a cat. It did not die. Months later, its upper body returned, slipping into the mosquito net of 1/2
#caturday

Oh my really???!!!! Wow what a coincidence 😅

a man and a woman are doing yoga on the beach Alt: a man and a woman are doing Tai Chi first sequence movement on the beach

Both my husband and myself are tai chi folk. Read your post out loud to him and you've earned yourself a chuckle 🤭

Medieval tomb effigy showing the face of a knight dressed in chainmail against a background of cut decorated stone.

Witness to war and then wars unimaginable. The face of William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke as captured in medieval sculpture at Temple Church, London. Servant to five kings, his resting place suffered terribly in the blitz, yet his face - like those of other knights interred here - still looks on.

Illustration of a woman walking beside a lion. Two more lions walk behind them.

'There was great joy when she arrived, for they all believed that she had been torn to pieces by the lion, and was no longer alive. But she told them what a handsome husband she had, and how well off she was.'
-The Singing, Springing Lark, Brothers Grimm.

🎨Arthur Rackham
#BookWormSat

On a headland stands a lighthouse, its small luminous light is shining. The morning sky is a pale apricot colour, streaked with faded blue. In the foreground frothy waves head for the beach.

Look not to the leader who is
easily swayed by flattery, or gold,
for they bring destruction,
rather turn to the one who has
weathered many storms, whose
signal has remained steadfast, sure,
whose upmost concern is safety for
all who traverse life’s seas

Cose-up of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headsstone marking the burial place of Drummer Sam Wadswoth. Either side of the headstone there are yellow daffodils in bloom.

Remembering Sam, son of Harry and Irene Wadsworth of Southowram Bank, Halifax. Drummer in the 4th Battalion, Duke of Wellington's West Riding Regiment. Sam died at Shelf Sanatorium on 7th March 1918, aged 18 years.
Image from April 2025.

Crackdowns on peaceful protest
Support for Conservative benefit cuts
Blaming migrants for failing public services

As Labour keeps moving right. The question is: How low do they want to go?

They were great weren't they?! Oh my sounds like you really got into the "spirit" of the much talked about but never seen Winston! That would've been hilarious! Indeed I would certainly agree - theatrical brilliance!

Awake to birdsong…it’s idiotically early, light only just beginning to seep into the margins of the sky, but I don’t mind a bit! After the darkness of winter, I’ll take every suggestion of light possible!
Wishing you a lovely day, dear early birds (human and winged!)

Jewel-like night sky at the farm. Little Dipper visible ✨

Photo of a brown bear

The only other creature allowed at the Pack Council - Baloo, the sleepy brown bear who teaches the wolf cubs - rose upon his hind quarters and grunted.

"The man’s cub?" he said. "I speak for the man’s cub. There is no harm in a man’s cub."

- Rudyard Kipling, "The Jungle Book"
#BookWormSat

March stars in north Hampshire, England .. Lesser Celandine

Hit London Central last night for some theatre-spotting ... the Duchess Theatre to see "The Play That Goes Wrong". A murder-mystery slapstick that goes disastrously wrong for the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society ... it was hilarious. Audience participation was a must - a recommended must-watch!

A tree that appears to be smiling when hugged

Trees don't have nervous systems, but do feel what is happening, & do experience something analogous to pain when they are damaged

It also means they kind of know when they are being hugged

Not a scientific breakthrough, just a semi fact/dream 🤗🌳🌲

By the river

#Dartmoor #Devon #water #rivers

Painting title: A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society. Painting of a dog. Birds and sea in the far background.

'A snarl! A scruffle round the room!
A sense that Death is drawing near!'
-To a Lady with an Unruly and Ill-mannered Dog Who Bit several Persons of Importance, Sir Walter Raleigh.

@signemaene.com and unruly dogs everywhere welcome you to #BookWormSat.

🎨Edwin Landseer

Detail from Landseer’s Man Proposes, God Disposes, 1864. A dark scene of one of two polar bears in the remains of the Franklin expedition. Arctic scene of fallen mast with ice and polar bear with a rib in his mouth. Painting. 

‘He once told me about polar bears - what solitary animals they are.’…
'Then what do polar bears exist for?’
‘Then what do we exist for?’ ~ Haruki Murakami.

Tomorrow for #BookWormSat we celebrate Landseer’s birthday with literature’s horses, dogs, deer, falcons and lions. Oh, and Polar Bears.

Just a little reminder that, should you be local to Cheshire, you'll find my feature page on local history and folklore in Cheshire Life Magazine every month! #cheshirelife #localhistory #cheshirefolklore

‘A space of their own’: how cancer centres designed by top architects can offer hope Exhibition at the V&A Dundee celebrates Maggie’s Centres created by Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, Norman Foster and others

www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Study, gouache on paper,11x14"