Oliver Clarke

Below is my first substack post, which is a selection of personal musings on this past year and the year to come.

@ruby_dunn01 Before you head into San Marco, the Chiostro dello Scalzo for Andrea del Sarto's grisaille masterpieces

Please recommend must-dos/sees/eats in Florence.

@bouledenerfs_ nixontapes.org

@PseudoJonathan (That or sling up a hammock and await RLF's reaction upon seeing it)

@PseudoJonathan A stylish picnic blanket remains one of the most important Trinity term investments. (Gentlemen may also consider a picnic basket, to ensure they are well refreshed while reading in newfound comfort)

Reading on grass is probably the activity with the biggest spread between how nice you imagine it to be and how nice it actually is

@Stefftaving The greatest: diplograph.net/notes/typograp…

I think this is a top contender for longest footnote. Has anyone anything above 2 pages and a half (it goes on...)? I must look, somewhere maybe I recall one of 3/4 pages.

New series on coinage, link in the next tweet

Garden of Earthly Delights

@aisiantonas @SarahFPoetry An excruciatingly awkward tutorial? Could never happen, definitely not. Not once.

@SarahFPoetry yes was considering that. suggestions for poems to discuss? maybe this is just prissy of me and it would work perfectly well if I tried it, but am instictively averse to doing To the Virgins (it is established in chapter 8 that both tutorial partners *are*)

so I have 8 potential tutorial slots for my fictional Spenser to Milton paper. Already covered: Wyatt, Donne, Herbert, Spenser. Will probably do Sidney next and finish up with Milton. But that leaves two. Suggestions?

@PseudoJonathan No, it should be similar to how the horses were in modern pentathlon - randomly assigned musicians provided by each country - you might get a string quartet, you might get an oompah band

IMO figure skaters should all skate to the same solo bassoonist (supplied by the Olympic Committee). Jumpsuits may be either grey or light blue

Coinage and a Conference in the City of World's Desire: Istanbul, Part 1 open.substack.com/pub/astroclass…

@joshglancy @WarGit Completely mad, was discussing at a conference last week how it's impossible to eat well/affordably/not at a chain in the centre compared to the past, while just a little further out the city is ringed with great independent places

@Astroclassicist @WarGit Yeah feels like a real planning failure, there’s just no reason for it to be that crap given how much prosperity and tourism there is in the town

Surprised by how shabby Oxford city centre has become. Was never outstandingly chic but now pockmarked by empty lots, fast food chains and Harry Potter shops. Even Waterstones has closed!

@joshglancy @WarGit There is a long-term plan with whole block that side of HB Street (though god knows when it will actually happen). George Street is in my eyes the most depressing bit. If they ever shift the bus station to by the train station and make it pedestrianised it might just live again

@Astroclassicist @WarGit Bunch of empty lots on George Street too, and the other side of Hythe Bridge Street. Noted re: Waterstones, though lord knows what will replace it in that spot

Trundling by train across Wessex on a day of perfect blue skies, apart from brief patches of dense fog, and all outlined by hard frost, the British countryside in winter cannot be beaten.

@ruby_dunn01 @PseudoJonathan @joseph_rohrbach The crimlim, if you will.

@PseudoJonathan @joseph_rohrbach Jonathan, please

What on earth is twixmass and when did people start using it? It feels horribly along the lines of plattyjubes and pannydem and such nonsense.

@john_ritzema @yeppjane A modern Boswell and Johnson? (I will leave it to others to decide who mirrors whom)

@SarahFPoetry The only acceptable literature is anonymous or pseudonymous, and if research reveals the villain who wrote it, it's also out.

Cancelling a writer for infidelity lmao