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  • Beachcombing’s Back June 2, 2020

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite , trackback


    I have had a couple of years off from the Beachcombing Blog and thought that it was time that I got to work again.

    When I started this blog ten years ago I was at a crossroads in my life. I’d just had a ‘bothersome’ medical diagnosis and I realised that I could no longer study medieval history: my great love for much of the previous decade and the subject of my doctorate.

    Writing this blog became a kind of sandpit in which I played with new toys. It also became a wonderful place to meet people who taught me new things and pointed me to new publications and new ideas. Thanks to the blog I settled on a new field of interest, the supernatural (I remain a stubbornly small ‘s’ sceptic – I say this as it often comes up) and I have had a great deal of fun since then. My academia page has many of my publications, some of them that began as pages here.

    My plan for the blog now is to concentrate on the supernatural, storytelling and folklore (with a particular accent on Britain and Ireland), though if anyone has some really weird history I could be tempted back to old habits… I have much less time, so I’ll no longer collect comments. I’ll just open up comments under posts and delete spam and sociopaths. I certainly won’t be doing a post a day. Ha! But maybe every month or so.

    Many of you won’t be visiting any more as our interests no longer coincide. Unsubscribe and walk away, old friends! Thanks for reading these posts for many years with varying degrees of patience. Many  kindly got in touch since I had my break and passed on good wishes. I’m ashamed to say that I’ve barely replied to any messages but I appreciated them all and the thought that went into them.

    Fyi the family is well. The tortoises still patrol the garden in their endless cycle of fisticuffs and rape. The little Miss Beachcombings are growing older: they are five, nine and eleven now. We are doing a home school unit on the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Stay topical. Mrs Beachcombing has a successful career and is doing a second degree on the side. I had been planning the downfall of western civilisation, but several others seem to have got there before me [insert emoji of a man pointing a gun at this head]. My email if you need it is: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Live long and prosper!

    PS It is a bit jarring running around the old wordpress dashboard after two years away: like returning, at forty, to your teenage bedroom with all the Stevie Nicks posters peeling off the wall or meeting a quondam lover in the swimming pool.