David Southwell @cultauthor Twitter profile

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David Southwell

8 years

Roll up! Roll up! Next year I'll be doing a guided #DoctorWho ’s London walk, an #ArthurMachen ’s London pub crawl and a London #horror walk.

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Last Seen Profiles

@hr23__

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@cartoon_magoo

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@All201L

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@FJJAFIML

@peatwsn

@artdepartmental

@elfielipe

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@SUPP_Agency

@maccaw

@Dmurphy1312

David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

#PeterCushing was born this day 1913. When I was a child, crying at Whistable, he gave me a cereal box toy. I still treasure it.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

6 years

I only have one Stephen Hawking story, but it is true and why I loved him.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

I’m 50 today. This is one of the worst birthdays of my life - and I’ve had some doozies. I’m going to sign out for a bit, but I’lll share two bits of wisdom. One, happiness is a state of least regret. Two, don’t wait to start your life on a sunny day, start it in the rain of now.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

He refuses the cat flap now and just does this endlessly till you let him in the back door.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

I’m no king nor queen, but here’s my Christmas speech. There’s a brutal darkness on this land. More than ever we need compassion engines, new networks of kindness. More than ever we need each other and a refusal of all shitlarking. Let love be on our lips, blessings on our backs.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

Don’t weaponise this. Don’t be a pisspuffin or have a hot take. Give people who think differently to you the space to grieve if they need it. The psychic skin of this county is bruised beyond belief. Just because you don’t feel this, let those that do have some time.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Solidarity to all those who wouldn’t get out of bed today unless they had to feed the cat. Solidarity to all those struggling. May all of us find some cheer in this time of bruises.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

I will admit that I am mildly suspicious of anyone who went through childhood not trying to signal a UFO with a torch, not trying to summon a single ghost.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Before I close this account down, some Bear for you.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

If like me, you’ve dithered about watching The Sandman because it was one of those comics like Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing that shaped you as a writer, as a person … Don’t be afraid. It is as beautiful as a @DaveMcKean cover, as beautifully written as a @neilhimself page.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Once you realise social media is an act of self-surveillance for the corporate state, possibly the only response is to curate for beauty, kindness and wonder.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Kill the questing beast in the pool of life … Winter of Discontent symbolic augury achieved.

Rare white deer shot dead on Bootle street by police

Officers were concerned about the dangers posed by the animal to passing motorists and pedestrians.

www.bbc.co.uk

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

I will likely be quiet for a bit. I hope to be back. If I am not, remember to be engines of kindness when you can.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear update. No longer vomiting blood, wound healing and getting back to being a ginger whinger. Thank you everyone for your kind support.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I am rage. Yet another comment in Hookland DMs on the basis of you can’t have made it all up/that sounds too much like a genuine academic quote/there’s too many voices to be the work of one person. Oh yeah? Because working class writers can’t do world-building or clever voices?

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

The thing neo-Thatcherites/those who masturbate with in abandoned glee about privatisation don’t get is that the NHS turns up to save my raggedy arse. It’s a best mate to many of us. We love it. Fucking it over makes us rage. It’s part of our identity at a profound level. #NHS

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Now, more than ever, there needs to be a moratorium on pissing on other people’s harmless little joys. Whatever sustains, whatever gets one through is blinking important right now. The list of things I will never get is long, but I really can keep it to myself for a while.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I’ve lost a good friend and wise voice in my life today. Despite what deniers and conspiracy grifters claim, C19 is an engine of grief. Beyond the statistics they want to dispute, there is death and a salt-way of tears. RIP Luc. You are always there in every cigar smoke phantom.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear says if you are going to be enjoying your gardens today remember for some during #coronavirus , the garden is haven, refuge from psychic pressure of ‘inside’, so could you keep the music down a little. Thank you. #Caturday

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 months

I am not going to lecture you on ill omens, but five horses, one-bloodied, bolting from near Buckingham Palace and charging through London, is up their with the shooting of the white hart in Bootle and the burning down of the 500-year old Whiteleaved Oak in Herefordshire.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

A Bear update. He is suffering quite badly from the scalding and infection, but he is at least keeping his medication down tonight. He remains deeply traumatised, but he will, with luck, get through this. Thank you all for concern, and to the trolling pisspuffins, do better.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 months

When you enter the ‘take it out on megaliths’ stage of activism, you’ve not only lost the plot and gone full wanker, you are asking for the full folkloric cursing usually reserved for desecration of ancient spines through time.

Just Stop Oil

@JustStop_Oil

2 months

🚨 BREAKING: Just Stop Oil Spray Stonehenge Orange 🔥 2 people took action the day before Summer Solstice, demanding the incoming government sign up to a legally binding treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030. 🧯 Help us take megalithic action —

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

If you have spare prayers today I am collecting them, especially post-noon.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

There will be hell to pay for this later.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear update. He is still struggling to recover, but has found enough trust in me to come and sleep on my lap. Thank you for your kind wishes.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Currently gratefully accepting prayers, healing and whatever.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

Remembering a time when I was hospitalised in 2004 when they asked me to stop wandering the corridors at night as my long hair and beard had upset a patent who thought Jesus had come to get him.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I see another raven has fled the Tower of London. At this rate of national augury, I expect Bran’s head to speak at some point this year.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

I am neurodivergent. I am working class. I have not been to university. I don’t care if these things show in my writing, in fact I am rather pleased if they do. These are not my badges of shame, these are my battle honours.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

9 years

If you are a news anchor speculating #ParisAttacks are the work of 'Syrian refugees' you are a fuckwit of the first order, not a journalist.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

8 months

The patronisation by the middle class on Radio 4 just never stops. “It is remarkable that a factory worker could write such a carol.” Will the middle class ever stop being surprised that the working class can produce art, beauty and awe?

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

It is perfectly normal to sing ‘I’m a very friendly lion called Parsley’ and do a little dance around the house isn’t it?

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

To the person in #E17 who has poured boiling water on my cat's back, we will find you. We will report the matter to the RSPCA. I will be his vengeance.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Not sure it suits me, but wearing my Nanna’s ring today, less as a good luck charm, more as a reminder she got through the Spanish Flu and two world wars, so this is nothing she would grumble about.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

My current drug intake. Three bags full. If not for the NHS, I would be dead. For all of its problems, it is one of the last bits of infrastructure that serves the marginalised. Never forget that there are those that want you to badmouth it for them.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

My kitchen. Not My flipping Cat. Thrown out 18 times between 6:37-8:12am.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Desperate for work. Will write anything; will edit; will ghost write; will run social media accounts; will create content; will even go back to spin-doctoring or teaching the 17 places to puncture on a corpse so gasses do not build up when dumping it in water. Please hire me.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

I lived through an accidental sounding of the three-minute warning. I lived through both sides being on such high nuclear alert a flock of birds almost triggered MAD. I know some of you are finding today traumatic, but it is Putin posturing and not worth the fear. Promise.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

Despite having had my bowel and lung cancer results and promising to call since 10am, my doctor’s surgery is now shut and I have a weekend of the hell of not knowing ahead. I am putting Hookland/Repton on automatic and signing out till I have hopefully good news. Love and pax.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

If you all want to pray, do magic or think good thoughts for me, today they are especially appreciated and needed.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but we are all made of bruises now. To maintain is almost impossible. You are not alone and you are doing better than you know.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

I may loose friends over this and I strongly believe in paying all artists, but never pay to attend #wassailing . If wassailing in your area has been made a paid to play event, subvert it and do your own. Not all old rituals should be part of heritage industry shitlarking.

Hookland

@HooklandGuide

5 years

If you ask the old folk why they wassail, beyond the usual replies of a love for apple brandy, for cider. some will tell you this: 'One night I slept in the orchard and the Apple Man came to me in a dream.' No more is said. No more needs to be said. - #CLNolan #Wassailing

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

The old town sighs at sundown.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

I created Hookland not as a living in the past, but as a dealing with the past. When writers go backwards in time, we are often trying to catch-up with its echoes into today, not chasing some faux sense of cool that those who spout about vintage a bit too much are obsessed with.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

I think one of my main takeaways from the current Jubilee celebrations is that Paddington Bear, Basil Brush or a Dalek would be a more popular Prime Minister of this country and a much more competent, trustworthy one than the current incumbent.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Asked in interview: ‘When did the English weird die?’ Ridiculous. It never did and it never will on my watch and the watch of many others. England’s default setting is high strangeness.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Bad tropes in #horror we could all live without No. 2 - deformity or disfigurement as lazy shorthand to suggest a character is evil or crazed. It was tired and vile when Gaston Leroux used it in 1910 and you won’t be improving on him or doing owt novel with it, so just don’t.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

My favourite John Hurt story was told to me by Richard Harris. Hurt had got drunk at The Savoy and was accosting all on The Strand in an attempt to start a fight. Harris heard him shout: “Punch me, I dare you!” A policeman replied: “We don’t fight national treasures Sir.”

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

There are no terrors worse than poverty. No monsters bigger and than neglect and indifference. Write for a hundred years and you’ll never invent a more foul horror than this Tory government.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

8 years

Red for the blood already shed. White for the racism and blue for how so many of us feel every damn day about #RedWhiteandBlueBrexit

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

As Phil Collins is trending, I am reminded he is the only person in the world I have mooned. Given he is a Tory voting, divorcing by fax and rude to his driver type of guy, I do not feel bad about this.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

It is a hard day for many. A day where the persistent bruise of grief, the unknitting wound of absence dominate. For some, it feels like the last passing of this day and we mourn the What-If Christmases we doubt we will see. It might not help, but thoughts and solidarity.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear, back from the vets today, is making progress. Pumped full of drugs, confined indoors and traumatised, but making progress. Thank you so much for your kind words and support.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Bad tropes in horror we could all live without No. 1 - depictions of gratuitous animal cruelty as a shorthand for signalling a character is evil. If your only way of showing character is the pornography of animal suffering, you are not really up to the creative gig. #Horror

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

When I was a child my Aunt Barbara told me that: “Literacy and poor people reading books scares the rich like nothing else.” As the years turn, more and more I know she was right.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

This is my bathroom. This is me having a bath to get all the hospital gunk off of me. This is not my cat.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I've never been part of the herd. I've never had immunity. I think we all know the chances of my getting through this are low. I will try - to spite a Tory and because my heart is full of love, my head full of words - but I'm being realistic.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

When I was a kid, I wanted to design and run a ghost train. I suppose in guiding Hookland, I have almost achieved that ambition.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

8 years

Rainy #Caturday . He is as grumpy as only a cat fed up with the cold teeth of rain can be.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

In honour of Lemmy, some my favourite moments from interviewing him:

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear is as OK as can be expected. Post-vet he is frightened of everyone, in pain, fighting an infection and going mad with the collar.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

We are all scared, but in fear my instinct is to try and be an even stronger engine of kindness, a more determined part of the infrastructure of community. I will not shiver against the future, instead I will remain as morbid as an old goth always is, and carry on flicking the V

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Years ago, when I was a young, wet journalist, I interviewed Bob Hoskins when he was trying to save an Essex cinema. I was meant to have 5 minutes, he gave me an hour on things London, working class, Romanichal and Roger Rabbit comedowns. My benchmark for actors is still Bob.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

1 year

Honestly, state of those #UFOHearings . Not one of them asked: “Is it fucking Faeries pretending to be aliens or what?”

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

To all those who say Covid is bullshit, I have been told to prepare for losing someone close to me this week from C19. So, you bring that ‘... it’s no worse than the flu ...’ malarkey on my timeline you will find you are dead to me.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

My chances of not snuffing it in the next six months have been greatly improved by a wonderfully dapper professor today. This is the best sort of writing motivation.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

I was once called despicable by Kate Hoey in the Commons. It was a bit like being defamed by someone with a reputation for decency as strong as Pol Pot. She is as fit to be trade envoy as I am to play for Arsenal.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

When I talk about folklore being the past walking into the now, today walking into tomorrow - this is what I mean. #FolkloreThursday

Hookland

@HooklandGuide

3 years

The Bone Horse dances tonight.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

1 year

When you lose a beloved pet of many years you lose a routine, an expectation of pestering. The wound is felt in a hundred little absences from the hours of day and night. If you mock the grief of someone who has lost a companion, you aren’t half a pisspuffin.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Accidentally lit some incense over a jar of dirt from H.P. Lovecraft’s grave. Every word of that sentence is true. I will let you know if anything untoward happens. #lovecraft #Cthulhu #UnintendedConsequences

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I am in bed with a cold and I am not sure whether I am his hot water bottle substitute or he is mine.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

The little ginger guilt-engine and 5:30am alarm clock is healing well.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

He is quite poorly and away to the vets tomorrow, but he has some deckchair time today.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear update: much better.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

Just in case you need it this morning.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I was planning on deleting this account next week and if I didn’t know better, I swear this was a pre-emptive strike to persuade me otherwise.

Skionar

@Skionar

4 years

@natureconnecti2 @HooklandGuide @NuitsdeY @edward_parnell I might add that Hookland is the reason I love twitter and he has personally helped out - with great generosity - on personal and professional advice. @cultauthor is one of the most interesting people I ever met, and I met (insert name-drop here)

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

As I have said before, we are all made of bruises now. Christmas and New Year can be tough for some at the best of times and these aren’t the best of times. To try and ease the isolation, they will be a full programme of #HookWatch and in January, the start of Hookland Book Club.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Bear is watching his first horror film. He usually only ever watches Inspector Morse.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I am becoming folk horror AKA I have at least another 18 months of being shielded so I might as well accept the inevitable madness.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

Bear is not happy. A sequential story.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 months

His first sunny afternoon in his chair of the year. #Caturday

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

10 months

It is an intimate act to pull books from someone’s shelves or extract LPs from their record collection.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

1 year

Time line cleanse. Bear's first deckchair day of 2023. He has feels.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

6 years

Sod infinite monkeys and #Shakespeare , I have a cat that likes rearranging fridge poetry magnets. He will Robert Frost-ing it soon. #Cats

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Bear update. Still traumatised and not himself, but doing so much better.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

In my dealings with David Amess across two decades I did not find him the saint described tonight. However, anyone taking any sick joy from his death, finding themselves gleeful about murder - check yourself. Compassion and sorrow for anyone who dies just trying to do their job.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Asleep on my desk.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

I do this thing called Hookland. If you want to know what it is about, pretty much this:

Hookland

@HooklandGuide

4 years

Oh we all know the big bucolic lies of England. A friendly village. A quiet place to live. Simpler, older ways. Deep traditions. If you tell these lies you are not only a false witness, but endangering the public’s safety. - #CLNolan , BBC National Programme talk, 1935

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

He still isn’t eating - not even Dreamies - and is more morose than ever, but here is your goodnight Bear.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

There are wankers who will try to tell you art and ‘high culture’ are not part of working class people’s lives. This is utter pisspuffinry. Let me tell you a story about Uncle Lal. 1/10

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

Also, I will be doing more than sighing when I am ‘advised’ to stop writing #EmilyBanting or other female voices. From now on, anyone sends me sneaky DMs telling me what voices I can and cannot use or telling me my writing isn’t working class, I will post those DMs publicly.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

5 years

Well done to the person who just pick-pocket me. I am so broke that card will do you no good and for the trouble it is causing me, I offer you this curse: may luck be against you in every situation you ever need it.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

I don’t care who knows it, #WorzelGummidge is my favourite thing on television.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

3 years

There will be no Hookand NFTs. As far as I am concerned, NFT stands for: No. Fuck Them.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

4 years

Here is your goodnight Bear.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

I know when you get to my age everything becomes a parade of death, but deeply gutted to hear the news of Terry Hall’s passing.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

2 years

In an online world mired in vile pisspuffins and sparklewanks, hold to those who bring you joy, hold to those who sustain and support. Celebrate and cherish them. People who spill good words, who are engines of kindness - these are deep treasure.

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David Southwell

@cultauthor

8 years

That moment where you see Peppa Pig is trending and think: "Oh heck, what has David Cameron done now?"

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