Alison Gomm

@LissaKEvans It’s perfect!

I seem to have stumbled across Dimperley. (Actually Tyntesfield, near Bristol).

@LissaKEvans What a lovely portrait. Still enjoying Cardinal colours.

Old gentleman, deservedly relaxing in the sun after walking almost round the block. He spent quite a long time inhaling the delicious scent of the place where he’d peed 10 minute earlier.

@PhilipHensher Bravo!

M Paul is there one night and sees Lucy getting off with Mme Walravens' hot 20-something friend, Père Silas. Who will Lucy choose??? Frankly it wouldn't be any worse than the new Wuthering Heights as far as respecting the book goes.

Actually I take that back about Villette. It would only be a 4 season Netflix thing called Lucy In Villette. Lucy, the feisty American girl goes to Villette to take a job at Madame Beck's advertising agency. (Tough on Lucy, but grows to respect her feistiness).

@LissaKEvans @BBCRadio4 You must be delighted. Such excellent and well deserved comments.

This is a potential hostage to fortune, given that I don't yet know what the guests thought of it, but I'm hugely thrilled to say that in tomorrow's episode of 'A Good Read' (@BBCRadio4 at 3pm), Harriett Gilbert 's book choice is my novel, 'Small Bomb at Dimperley'.

@Bobby_Seagull Happy birthday, Bobby!

It’s my birthday! 🥳🎂 I’m definitely smiling more than 5-year-old Bobby did in his sassy "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" jeans! 🐢👖 Thank you for all the love & support across all my endeavours. Means the world! ❤️ The Birthday Challenge: Can you calculate my age using the clues below? 👇🔢 Clues: 1) Sum of 1st, 4th, 5th square number 2)  In the periodic table, the atomic number of Molybdenum 3) Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy #Birthday #Quiz #Clues #Puzzle #Age

@Carolyn726 @LissaKEvans @TheAttagirls At primary school in the 1960s we were divided into 4 houses: Columbus, Stephenson, Nightingale and Aylward. We were told their stories, but because the other three were long dead, I assumed that Gladys Aylward was, too. Only now have I learnt that she was still alive. Thank you!

@LissaKEvans @TheAttagirls When I was a little girl my grandmother took me to hear Gladys Aylward speak at the local Methodist chapel. She gave me her autograph in Chinese writing.

Woman of the Day missionary and social reformer Gladys Aylward, who died OTD in 1970 at 67, led nearly a hundred orphans to safety on a 100‐mile trek across China across the mountains and the Yellow River, fleeing from advancing Japanese invaders. Born in 1902 in London, Gladys was just out of her teens when she responded to a call to serve overseas as a Christian missionary but she failed to pass the exams. She saved her money and bided her time. When an older missionary in Yangcheng, Jeannie Lawson, sent out a call for a young woman to carry on her work, Gladys wrote and was accepted. She couldn’t afford the ship fare but had just enough for the train and in October 1930, set off for China. It was an arduous journey. China and Russia were engaged in an undeclared war. Gladys went via Vladivostok, Japan and Tientsin by train, then bus, then mule, finally arriving in Yangcheng. Together, she and Jeannie started an inn for mule drivers, the Inn of Eight Happinesses. Neither woman was trusted by the locals but when a trade caravan came past, Gladys grabbed the rein of the lead mule and turned it into their courtyard. The mule went willingly; courtyards meant food, water and rest for the night. The other mules followed so the muleteers had no choice. They were given good food, warm beds and their mules were well cared for. The first Chinese Gladys learned was “We have no bugs, we have no fleas. Good, good, good, come, come, come” but after the first few weeks, she didn’t need to kidnap customers. They turned in at the inn by choice. Within a year, Jeannie died, leaving Gladys to run the mission alone with the help of her Chinese cook, Yang. Her reputation grew, so much so that the local Mandarin asked her to become a foot-inspector. Foot binding had just been made illegal. For centuries, women’s feet had been tightly bandaged from infancy, making walking painful, but it satisfied men’s notions of graceful femininity. Only a woman with her own feet unbound could enter women’s quarters to inspect unbound feet without scandal. Gladys accepted and was remarkably successful at a time when other inspectors met with resistance and even violence. In 1936, Gladys officially became a Chinese citizen, living as frugally as the people around her. When Japanese forces bombed and occupied Yangcheng in 1938 driving survivors into the mountains, Gladys gathered together nearly a hundred children aged between four and eight and led them on a 100-mile trek across the mountains and the Yellow River. "The eagle that soars in the upper air does not worry itself how it is to cross rivers." At the end of the 27‐day march, she was almost unconscious and delirious with typhus and fever, but she achieved her mission: to bring the children to safety at an orphanage in Sian. "Life is pitiful, death so familiar, suffering and pain so common, yet I would not be anywhere else. Do not wish me out of this or in any way seek to get me out, for I will not be got out while this trial is on. These are my people, God has given them to me, and I will live or die with them for Him and His glory." If you remember an old film made in 1958 called The Inn of The Sixth Happiness, that was based on Gladys. When it was reviewed by Newsweek, a reader dismissed it as fiction: "In order for a movie to be good, the story should be believable!" Determined women are very, very good at achieving the most unbelievable things. "I wasn’t God’s first choice for what I’ve done for China. I don’t know who it was. It must have been a man, a well-educated man. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn’t willing...and God looked down and saw Gladys Aylward...and God said, ‘Well, she’s willing.’"

@TimRideout1 Get well soon!

Laid up with the ‘flu, I can barely put one foot in front of the other. Continuing to read STILL LIFE by A S Byatt, the second novel in her Frederica Quartet. Mid-1950s. Playwright Alexander Wedderburn is lodging with Thomas and Elinor Poole and conducting a quiet, sublime affair with Elinor. Byatt’s ability to connect intimacy to a greater appreciation of the world, to art, to language, is exceptional. Simultaneously removed from and central to Alexander’s understanding of his own place in the world, he and Elinor make love, not as an act of defiance but as a complex healing and decoding. In marble halls as white as milk Lined with a veil as soft as silk No doors are there to this stronghold Yet thieves break in and steal the gold. What began as a winter reading project, to see me through the dark months, has become a lifeline, a shuttered glimpse of other possibilities.

@LissaKEvans @smc444 Listened straight away. It’s wonderful. Siân Phillips and Stephanie Cole must have had such fun with those monsters.

Thank you to @smc444 for letting me know that this series, which I produced 30 years ago, in on BBC sounds. I think I had the best cast ever assembled in a studio. They nailed everything first take and spent the rest of the time screaming with laughter... bbc.co.uk/sounds/series/…

@LissaKEvans The Force be with him.

Watson doing his Obi-Wan impression.

@TimRideout1 Congratulations!

PUBLICATION DAY! I am delighted to announce that Gothic Precarity: Fear and Anxiety in Twenty-First-Century Fiction is published today! Writing this book has been a journey into the shadows—into the ways fear and uncertainty shape our culture, our literature, and our sense of ourselves in the twenty-first century. The Gothic has always been a literature of unease, but today it feels especially urgent. From climate crisis to political instability, we live in precarious times, and fiction often gives voice to those anxieties when we struggle to name them ourselves. My hope is that this book shows how contemporary writers continue to deploy the Gothic mode to capture the fragility, dread, and resilience of our moment. This project wouldn’t exist without the support of friends, colleagues, and mentors who encouraged me when the task felt overwhelming, and of course without the writers whose work I’ve had the privilege of exploring. So today isn’t just about a book—it’s about conversation, community, and the stories we tell to make sense of our fears. I hope this work is well received and that it adds to a much needed debate. #Gothic #precarity #neoliberalism #fear @UniWalesPress uwp.co.uk/book/gothic-pr… amzn.eu/d/diwAjG1 waterstones.com/book/gothic-pr…

@LissaKEvans Go for it!

Just sorted through my wool stash and I have just about enough randomly-coloured teeny leftover balls to knit thirty five unwearable hippy jumpers.

This is a wonderful book - and I’m not just saying that to attract Watson’s attention.

Watson is looking at you - yes, YOU. Small Bomb at Dimperley is out in paperback in a month, and I have two signed copies to give away. RT before tomorrow tea-time (4.45pm) and Watson will choose the person he likes the look of most. Bribes possibly accepted.

Council housing, once common and broadly accessible, now serves mainly low-income households and sees minimal new builds. Peter A. Kemp finds that social housing covers only 1 in 6 households today. #HousingPolicy #uk academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/…

@LissaKEvans How lovely to have meadow sweet.

Garden easing towards full jungle mode.

UK pensions face challenges from an ageing population. @JCribbEcon, Carl Emmerson and @Heidi_Karj argue that this implies raising pension age—hitting poorer groups hardest—or limiting ‘triple lock’ indexation, impacting higher earners more. #Pensions academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/…

@LissaKEvans Dearest chap

Had a little walk, now having a little rest (on my duvet, obv).

Sustained productivity growth underpins a successful welfare state but the UK has faced years of stagnant real wages and weak productivity. @s_machin_ explores policies to revive sustained wage growth. #Growth #UK academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/…

The Nordic welfare model is lauded for balancing high income and equality in open economies with large public sectors. Torben M. Andersen and @MichaelSvarer review its features, resilience, and policies, while exploring future challenges. #Welfare #Nordics academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/…

Rhys Andrews examines divergence in local welfare expenditure across the devolved UK. While academy school expansion in England reduced local education spending, Scotland’s free social care policy increased adult social care expenditure. #LocalWelfareUK academic.oup.com/oxrep/article/…