Dr Andrew McInnes
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drbeard79.bsky.social
Dr Andrew McInnes
@drbeard79.bsky.social
4.4K followers 3.8K following 4.5K posts
Hopeless Romanticist, childless cat dad, and coffee addict (he/him)
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drbeard79.bsky.social
First photo of Hazel our calico kitten for your viewing pleasure 🖤
A very young kitten looking bewildered and damp with teeny ears and boggled eyes with paws spread out lying on her mother
January 23, 2026 at 5:59 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Time for this old chestnut (I have been finding marking hard this year - so very, very hard)
Capt Haddock looking knackered saying ‘what a semester, huh?’ Tintin looking concerned saying ‘Captain, it starts on Monday!’ Oh to be Snowy, drinking the Capt’s beer
January 23, 2026 at 11:35 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Took this photo to help with calling it out (with apologies to any post that appears above it in your feed)
A road sign reading BS with an arrow pointing upwards (originally to mark a bus stop)
January 23, 2026 at 9:56 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Dan and I reading Mansfield Park:
The sad / happy side of the bus meme with FANNY IS IN LOVE WITH HER NARCISSISTIC HUMILITY over both the sad man in purple (Dan) looking at a wall of rock and the happy man in orange (me) looking out over hills and dales
January 20, 2026 at 6:19 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
BART’s worst day… so far meme reading: BART: THIS IS THE DUMBEST DIPLOMATIC CRISIS OF MY LIFE Homer bending over to reassure Bart: THIS IS THE DUMBEST DIPLOMATIC CRISIS OF YOUR LIFE... SO FAR!
January 19, 2026 at 5:28 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
RIP Emily Brontë, you would’ve loved Live Action Role Playing
Emily and Anne left home on 3o June, travelling on the newly opened Keighley line to Bradford, where they changed trains for Leeds then York. Emily's description of the holiday, which she included in her diary paper written a month later on her twenty-seventh birthday, is a fascinating revelation of her priorities. Anne and I went our first long Journey by ourselves together/ - leaving Home on the 3oth of June - monday - sleeping at York - returning to Keighley Tuesday evening sleeping there and walking home on wedensday morning - though the weather was broken, we enjoyed ourselves very much except during a few hours at Bradford and during our excursion we were Ronald Macelgin, Henry Angora, Juliet Augusteena, Rosobelle Esraldan, Ella and Julian Egramont Catherine Navarre and Cordelia Firzaphnold escaping from the Palaces of Instruction to join the Royalists who are hard driven at present by the victorious Republicans -
January 18, 2026 at 2:27 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Happy birthday, Anne Brontë aka Acton Bell aka Action Bell, superheroine 🖤
One of Charlotte’s paintings of Anne looking stern with a choker and blue dress
January 17, 2026 at 10:13 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Wilbur and Hazel wish you a restful #Caturday - remember to stretch! Sleep is important! 🖤
Wilbur our black cat stretching out on his chair and doing a big yawn Hazel our calico kitten snoozing on my leg
January 17, 2026 at 7:01 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Shedding a little tear at the death of Aunt Branwell 🖤
There is no misunderstanding. I have had a long attendance at the death-bed of the Rev. Mr Weightman, one of my dearest friends, and now I am attending at the death-bed of my aunt, who has been for twenty years as my mother. I expect her to die in a few hours. In fact, it was four more days before Aunt Branwell died, an internal obstruction of her bowel reducing her to helpless agony. Writing to Grundy again on the day she died, Branwell was almost beside himself. As I don't want to lose a real friend, I write in deprecation of the tone of your letter. Death only has made me neglectful of your kindness, and I have lately had so much experience with him, that your sister would not now blame me for indulging in gloomy visions either of this world or another. I am incoherent, I fear, but I have been waking two nights witnessing such agonising suffering as I would not wish my worst enemy to endure; and I have now lost the guide and director of all the happy days connected with my childhood.? If ever there was a corrective to the usual view of Aunt Branwell as a despotic, unpleasant and narrow-minded spinster who made the Bront children's lives a misery, Branwell's unsolicited testimonial is it.
January 16, 2026 at 1:30 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
My most unpopular opinion is that Memoirs is a candid attempt by Godwin to adapt the language of (male) genius for Wollstonecraft, showing how her unique experiences shaped her radical life & revolutionary writing

AND a grieving widower is not responsible for the reactionary abuse of his candour
Flynn Rider from Tangled surrounded by swords standing in for me surrounded by irate Wollstonecraftians
January 16, 2026 at 7:23 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
David Bowie died the day I bought Blackstar 10 years ago so I have re-watched Labyrinth in its 40th anniversary year in an effort to re-right the balance of the universe
Intricate illustrated poster for Labyrinth featuring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly with big hair and interlocking scenes from the film in a sort of peach-y colour scheme
January 12, 2026 at 5:18 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Re-watched The Worst Person in the World which is gorgeous & funny & sad & cinematic: come 4 Renata Reinsve pressing pause on her life & running thru Oslo; stay 4 when she takes mushrooms & throws a tampon at her dream dad; enjoy the camera following the crash of Anders Danielsen Lie air drumming
Renata Reinsve blowing smoke in Herbert Nordrum’s mouth against a black background - title is in white with pink text reading Spend Valentine’s with as a tagline for The Worst Person in the World
January 11, 2026 at 3:46 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Join us!
January 10, 2026 at 1:28 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Loving Trier’s The Worst Person in the World & Sentimental Value, I tried Reprise, the first in his loose Oslo Trilogy, which is patchier but worth it for the bit when a dog knocks one of the characters of a park bench 😂
Reprise poster with the backs of various characters walking away from us in black and white against blue with a range of colour stills running across the bottom in tearaway style - it’s going for a Trainspotting vibe, I think, which works if you replace heroin use with neurotic authorship
January 10, 2026 at 8:07 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Each word is deceptively simple, deceptively easy to define. But definition seeing rather than perceiving, hearing and not understanding, is only the shadow of meaning.
Ninth Poem in Fascicle 34. My Life had stood-a Loaded Gun- In Corners-till a Day The Owner passed-identified- And carried Me away- And now We roam in Sovreign Woods-And now We hunt the Doe- And every time I speak for Him- The Mountains straight reply- And do I smile, such cordial light Upon the Valley glow- It is as a Vesuvian face Had let it's pleasure through- And when at Night-Our good Day done-I guard My Master's Head- 'Tis better than the Eider-Duck's Deep Pillow-to have shared - To foe of His-I'm deadly foe- None stir the second time- On whom I lay a Yellow Eye- Or an emphatic Thumb- Though I than He-may longer live He longer must -than I- For I have but the power to kill, Without -the power to die- 5. in] the- (754, about 1863) 16. Deep] low 18. stir] harm 23. power] art
January 9, 2026 at 5:06 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
In some sense the subject of any poem is the author’s state of mind at the time it was written, but facts of an artist’s life will never explain that particular artist’s truth.
The Martyr Poets-did not tell- But wrought their Pang in syllable- That when their mortal name be numb- Their mortal fate- encourage Some - The Martyr Painters-never spoke- Bequeathing-rather-to their Work- That when their conscious fingers cease- Some seek in Art-the Art of Peace- * (544) 3. name] fame 8. Some] Men-
January 9, 2026 at 5:06 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Who is this Spider-Artist? Not *my* Emily Dickinson
14 Susan Howe Where the stitching of suicide simply gathers the poet's scattered selves into the uniform snow of death, the spider artist's artful stitching connects those fragments with a single self-developed and self-developing yarn of pearl. The stitch of suicide is a stab or puncture, like a "stitch in the side." The stitch of art is provident and healing, "a stitch in time." Stabbing, wounding, the stitch of suicide paradoxically represents not just a unifying but a further rending. Healing, the stitch of art is a bridge... But the cleaving of "I felt a Cleaving in my Mind" and the chasm of "This Chasm, Sweet," are patched and mended, seam to seam, by the magical stitchery of art. (The Madwoman in the Attic, p. 639)
January 9, 2026 at 5:06 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Read Susan Howe’s My Emily Dickinson to help out one of my PhD students - it’s *so* quotable on poetry - a thread
Front cover with black and white photo of Dickinson in a red frame
January 9, 2026 at 5:06 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
*super* fun to get a migraine aura that scintillates across the line of text I’m reading when I have SO MUCH to read
Joseph Babinski’s representation of migraine auras from 1890 - a series of yellow and red squiggles with darker blue hearts growing in size down the page
January 7, 2026 at 10:22 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Animals on ice
A duck on ice A coot slipping on an icy lake A cat ! on the iced over canal (I tried to schoosh it off but to no avail)
January 7, 2026 at 9:42 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Cheeky pint with The Brontës
Juliet Barker’s brick of a Brontë biography next to a tall pint of Erdinger on a pub table with a view of the dreich outside in contrast to the pub’s golden glow
January 6, 2026 at 3:38 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Happy #InternationalUnsolicitedDuckPicDay to all who celebrate
Four ducks - a blonde, a drake, a duck, and another mallard drake - on a fishing platform
January 6, 2026 at 10:04 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Happy with ‘smol’ as my 2026 word as I have been thinking about @nathankhensley.bsky.social’s ‘small acts of sabotage’ from
Action Without Hope as my guiding principle for the year ahead - seeking solidarity 🖤
Screenshot of Merriam Webster’s Your 2026 Word landing on smol (for the record, I got brain rot first 🤣) Two of my own skeets reading: 'small-scaled acts of reconfiguration can torque a fallen idiom from the inside, interrupting the smooth functionality of a world whose obscenity is coded into the very structures of everyday thought and speech... 2/6 These small acts of sabotage can then help create lines of filiation by which other, equally unfree speakers of our broken language might find solidarity in struggle.' (P. 25) 3/6
January 1, 2026 at 5:07 PM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Oooh delicious! I went for a breezy jog earlier and we’re making a mushroom pie which involves lentils so all good for the 1st 🖤
View of Longniddry beach through some rushes
January 1, 2026 at 11:26 AM
drbeard79.bsky.social
Finished my 4th mini-journal which I subtitled A New Hope and which, after a hard academic year 24/25, turned out to be surprisingly full of delight (music! TV! dinners! students! Austen! Brontë poems!) - here’s hoping the Empire Does Not Strike Back in 2026!
A teeny journal with a kawaii cyclops holding a red cauldron on it Inside the journal reading Xenia Edition on one page and Micro-Journal 4: A New Hope / July-December 2025
January 1, 2026 at 10:00 AM