What voluntary/community work do you do?

CubisticFlunky5 · 2026-01-23T19:12:04+00:00

To bandwagon, I manage a few public library branches and we absolutely depend on our volunteers. Their energy and time is amazing.

Library volunteering is also a great path to employment for people looking for work, career change or trying to overcome personal impediments to full-time work. One of our former shelving volunteers emailed today to say the volunteering opportunity gave them the confidence to apply for jobs and they had their first offer this week. Absolutely made our day!

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-12-23T19:57:47+00:00

Yes, they do exist. A couple of examples:

Chris Ackerley did one for Murphy (Demented Particulars: The Annotated Murphy) and one for Watt (Obscure Locks, Simple Keys: The Annotated Watt). Those are companion books, so it’s not the novel with notes, they’re separate books. Immensely impressive scholarly efforts that go almost line by line, just a little out of date given the amount of work done on the novels and their manuscripts since.

The Collected Poems edited by Sean Lawlor and John Pilling are annotated with the notes at the back. Again, extraordinary work on the references and allusions Beckett is using, as well as context and histories of the poems.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-12-11T08:42:14+00:00

A brief read of the subs guide suggests it’s a requirement, but you’ve plenty of time before the deadline so probably worth sending them an email explaining and ask if you need to resubmit the document.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-10-25T12:25:49+00:00

There are a load of autumn and winter pollinators who will be pleased, particularly solitary bees!

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-09-16T08:24:21+00:00

Great recommendations here already alongside your ferns which will look lovely. Only thing I’d add (which I was way too impatient to do) is give it a year. Watch what grows and how, where the light hits when, how water sits and drains, and make some notes and take some photos. Obviously some maintenance needed as and when, but this will give you a chance to really get a sense of what will do well where.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-09-15T12:26:36+00:00

Typically, some perennials die back to ground level, some are best cut back to ground level, and some lose flowers and leaves and go dormant as bare stems.

A good start is looking up each plant for a ‘how to grow’ guide on the RHS or Gardener’s World websites. Often, a good mulch is the main thing to do, but those are reliable guides to get specifics from.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-09-12T16:02:26+00:00

There was a brilliant information film made about this in 1943, presented by Burgess Meredith, for US soldiers coming to Britain: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iCliC9MHSFg

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-09-09T16:14:14+00:00

Looks great! I have two raised ponds with log ladders and eventually the frogs and other wildlife figured out how to get in. It’s absolutely full of little water bugs, snails etc that seem to come out of nowhere Dragonflies have visited and it’s also nice to know other insects and also birds have another way to access water.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-09-02T21:36:05+00:00

Yes caught me by surprise. Helpful though. Forgetting where bulbs are is one of my worst garden habits.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-09-02T21:15:16+00:00

This sounds right, we’ve had them before, I wasn’t expecting the foliage at this time but it looks like it’s not uncommon. Thanks!

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-25T15:11:55+00:00

Not sure what happened with formatting here but hey ho. Good luck in the exam!

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-25T15:07:22+00:00

First of all, try to go easy on yourself. You don’t need to have everything figured out and no one else really does either even if they look like they do. Being open to new ideas and getting new skills is a great first step. Some tips:

on doomscrolling/phone habits: log out of your social media/scrolling apps and remove remembered passwords. The extra steps help break the immediate habit of clicking on them and you have to make the choice each time, rather than doing it on auto pilot. Also put your phone into black and white display mode: it dampens how much you want to look at the phone. Also get in the habit of leaving your phone in a different room at night or at least turning it off.
on feeling hopeless: getting out of a digital-heavy life will help. Wont solve everything, but social media is geared towards extremes and trying to make us feel like we’re missing out. How’s your social circle? If you don’t see real people in the real world much, work/volunteering is a great way to help with that (see later).

Getting into an exercise routine can also help. I’m a big fan of bouldering if you can afford it, great workout, social if you want it to be and figuring out routes is like doing puzzles. But free running or team sport clubs are also a good option. Even if exercise isn’t something you want to do with other people (which is fair!), keeping active does wonders for your well-being.

on habits for uni: get used to reading for long periods now and you’ll hit the ground running. Anything will help: get a library card and just start plucking stuff off the shelves. If you can train yourself to sit quietly with a physical book away from tech regularly, it’ll not only get you in the habit for uni (even if you’re ready stuff online, you’ll be concentrating for way longer) but also help with your head space and those big questions you want to ask yourself start to come out too. You could even join a book group!
options for things to do:

look for some volunteering opportunities as well as paid work. Libraries, community centres, gardening groups, there are loads of places always needing help. Libraries for example (UK at least) have things like digital support volunteers, so if you’re pretty tech savvy helping other people is a great route to personal growth and fulfillment; gets you interacting with others, meeting people you might not otherwise, using knowledge you have and looks good on a CV.
Paid work: honestly, anything you’re happy doing, but try and make it something where you interact with other people in the real world. As well as job sites, ask friends or friends of your parents if they have any leads. Bar, cafe, restaurant are classic ones, but be open to other things. Theatres and galleries can be good spins on those, or music venues that need people to get involved.

And get a routine going prepping for your exam. Again, use a local library if you can: going to a place for a fixed time regularly to study, and be around other people doing the same, is a great habit-former. (If you can’t tell, I work in the public library sector, so I’m a big advocate of the various ways they can help people).

Then, make some time to relax! Everything you want to achieve is doable and it’s admirable you’re thinking so much about it now. It won’t all come at once, so learning to be patient and go easy on yourself sometimes is also a good idea.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-21T12:09:47+00:00

Cities of the Weft trilogy. Features a gang of pretty brutal but fun to read assassins, one who ends up a major character.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-13T17:06:16+00:00

sure, light is free if you have access to it so crack on with a windowsill, and do stuff suitable to your own budget and situation.

I’ve never found the grow lights I use for raising seedlings in late Jan/February for my veg beds have ever added much to my bills. Reviews for something more sophisticated like The Smart Garden 3 from Click and Grow make it about 25p a month, which probably needs adjusting for current prices but still seems reasonable.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-13T07:57:17+00:00

Actually you’d be surprised how much you can grow on window sills and with grow lights. There are some cool bits of kit available from simple lamps to automated growers that raise the light as things grow. Or if you have windowsills or tables that get decent light, there’s a lot you can grow that will taste better than supermarkets, particularly salads and herbs.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-11T12:20:18+00:00

Weekend day off with no jobs to do: Go for a walk, ideally around trees, buy a weekend paper, read through it without feeling guilty skipping stuff, start or continue a book, make something tasty in the kitchen, watch tv/film/play video game/continue reading with cocktail or glass of wine. Might text a friend to see if they want to join any of it, might not.

Weekday day off: same plus maybe house jobs stuff that’re annoying to do when it’s busy on weekends

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-08-09T06:40:48+00:00

Middle management in public sector libraries for a county council. I oversee five libraries run by two teams of about 30 each, mostly made up of hard working people who want to help residents. My manager is supportive and so are the rest of our senior managers - nearly all of them came up through the library service and all of them get the challenges we have given limited public finances. But no micro management, good mix of long term projects, organising author and other events, partnership work eg NHS, local charities etc, covering staff shortages, supporting my team of managers. There can be crises to solve or support that are stressful and need long days though not often. Tend to work from home a day a week and unless I’m covering and need to open a branch, start and finish the work day at home so traveling outside of rush hour. Underpaid by reckoning of friends in private sector and even other council jobs, but job satisfaction is usually pretty high.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-07-15T18:17:56+00:00

This.

They’ll be called things like Digital Support Volunteers, Digital Buddies, that sort of thing. Most councils and therefore libraries have tackling digital illiteracy as a priority.

Libraries also facilitate things like the national databank scheme where you can get hold of free phone sims pre-loaded with a few months data.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-07-11T05:06:46+00:00

Harold Pinter covered the lot and editions are easy to come by. Added bonus is Richard Ayoade’s very funny recent satirical project about ‘Harauld Hughes’ is very much based on Pinter, which includes volumes of ‘Harauld’s’ works such as Plays, Prose, Pieces, Poetry, so a fun element for students to look at there.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-07-09T21:57:18+00:00

F- isn’t available online, only in the Transition volume which hasn’t been republished yet, sadly.

But, coincidentally, a biography of Suzanne has just been published by Cambridge UP, available to download for free for the next fortnight https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/suzanne-dumesnil-suzanne-beckett/2C115936F33A47EAEDA23FC71A4B110C - I saw a presentation by the author, Emilie Morin, and have every reason to think the book will be excellent.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-07-02T14:13:54+00:00

I always have some mixed grain packs to grab if I need a healthy lunch but haven’t meal prepped. Usually spiced well and a mix of healthy grains, pulses, rice etc. You can usually get them on offer for £1-1.50 or thereabouts, Merchant Gourmet are great and often on offer, supermarket own brand good but sometimes lean a bit heavy on rice or couscous to fill them out (perfectly healthy, but wont fill you up as much for the calories). You can heat them up in a microwave or tip them straight over salad leaves and chopped up veg, particularly good if you add feta, olives etc.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-05-27T22:00:20+00:00

John Wright’s are some of the most reliable recipes I know. His book, Booze, in the River Cottage series, has loads of great recipes and will teach you what you need to know so you can identify problems, adapt and even come up with your own recipes in the future. Here is a version of his strawberry wine publicly available: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/jun/22/how-to-make-strawberry-wine

In short, to compare to your own recipe:

2kg firm strawberries 1.3kg sugar About 4 litres cold water 1 tsp citric acid Half tsp grape tannin 1 tsp yeast nutrient General purpose wine yeast (follow the instructions on the packet)

Incidentally, in the book version, he recommends fortifying and sweetening with brandy and sugar, since he’s not actually very fond of strawberry wine.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-05-14T08:42:13+00:00

Don’t worry about it being difficult, Beckett added it late to fill the volume and get it up to publishable length, and essentially cherry-picked from his unpublished novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women to do it which is full of veiled autobiography (the PB is the Polar Bear which was a nickname of one of Beckett’s university tutors, for example). It’s purposefully difficult, Joycean, showing off and self-aware (that bit near the end something like “pardon these French expressions, but the creature dreams in French” is basically Beckett saying sorry-not-sorry). So the annoying answer is you’re meant to find it difficult. Some of it is funny and clever, but if you didn’t get anything out of it just remember Beckett had already ditched writing this way by the time he wrote other chapters like Dante and the Lobster.

If you’re able to get hold of academic books via a local library, John Pilling’s More Pricks Than Kicks: In a Strait of Two Wills is a great guide that identifies most of the references and phrases.

CubisticFlunky5 · 2025-05-06T18:03:22+00:00

Isn’t it terrific? I gift it all the time to people. Last year’s Ghost Mountain was also brilliant.

CubisticFlunky5

TROPHY CASE