Just submitted these beauties for our local flower and produce show. Our gooseberries have won Best Fruit before, so…🤞🏻
Storyteller Fran
@storytellerfran.bsky.social
✨✨Lover of folklore, church history, stories, weird saints, cats, magic. Orkney dweller. ✨✨
As a churchcrawler myself, I fully endorse this lovely article! I expect that @g0blinegg.bsky.social also has a list on her phone of ‘interesting churches I’ve heard about and must visit’. You’ll never run out of medieval churches to visit - Suffolk is my favourite 💒
✨️New Post ✨️ There is a new article over on the website! This one discusses some of my top tips for churchcrawling! There is a great joy to be found whilst visiting historic churches! nearlyknowledgeable.co.uk/guide-to-chu... #churches #history #heritage #churchcrawling
I’m a member of a Facebook group where clergy post things they don’t need and are trying to get rid of. Birthday/Christmas/Santa/Jesus turned up today and I love him.
Saints Alive!! 😇🙏 I had a good blether with my storytelling pal Tom Muir for the Orkneyology podcast! Strap in for miracles, murders, and puking wolves, with bonus illustrations by @howfartohitchin.bsky.social youtu.be/Y0xBBJjDCv8?...
Scotland's Strangest Saints | ep 32 ~ with St Magnus Cathedral Curator Fran Flett Hollinrake
YouTube video by Orkneyology
youtu.be
Larry laid his mouse in front of the press to be photographed. Lest you ask, this is a real photograph via the Press Association.
After a tip-off from @adrianholmes.bsky.social I sought out the Linn turntable at the National Museum of Scotland. Currently spinning - Feel No Fret by The Average White Band 🤘✨🎶😎🎷🎸
We have a beehive doocot here in Orkney - this is valuable information! Thank you 🪺🕊️
Most of us know what a Doocot / Dovecot is, but did you wonder how that collected the eggs, in the largest ones?
TFW a book arrives that you don’t remember ordering, but cool cool
Springwatch is Frank’s favourite programme 🖤🐈⬛🐦⬛
*Special Curator Tour: How to Read a Church* Why do churches look the way they do? Why are they east-west? What’s a piscina? Why is there a ladder in the big window? On Wed 3 June at 2pm the curator will lead a tour looking at the symbolism of features found in a church. £15.60, no need to book.
It’s the Feast of St Bede, revered for his writing & scholarship. The word bede/bead means ‘prayer’ or ‘request’ or ‘supplication’. It shares a linguistic root with ‘bid’ & the German ‘bitte’. Rosaries, with their ceramic or glass spheres, aid devotion, with each sphere being a prayer, or bead.
Today is the start of @cwgc.bsky.social War Graves Week. I researched & delivered a tour of the war graves in @stmagnuscathedral.bsky.social & those commemorated but buried elsewhere. Thanks to all who came - it’s important to tell these stories. Thanks to @nessbattery.bsky.social for the photos.
For War Graves Week (16-24 May) we are offering a FREE tour of the cathedral graveyard to tell the stories of the @cwgc.bsky.social graves, the local war memorial, and those mentioned on family gravestones but buried elsewhere. Saturday 16 May 12.30pm Starts Kirkwall war memorial No need to book.
#Thefolkloreofscottishsaints Currently wrestling with Mungo, founder and patron saint of Glasgow! 🐦⬛🌳🔔🐟
I think it's really underappreciated that a large chunk of people across the world are everyday being served images of the world's worst atrocities, essentially live as they happen, in ways previously only experienced by people on the frontline, who have historically had years of trauma as a result.
🌟😇 The Folklore of Scottish Saints 😇🌟 I’m writing this little book for The History Press, and I’m delighted to reveal the gorgeous cover art, by artist and illustrator Paul Dews. Put St Columba and a squirrel on the front - everyone will buy it, right?
Lovely to read and hear these words, Peter! Thank you for mentioning GMB and St Magnus too.
"Writing, for me, is a chance to put something good into the world ... Life is hard. I like to soften it." I'm pleased to have been interviewed by @mathewlyons.bsky.social. Upon A White Horse: Journeys in Ancient Britain and Ireland is published in paperback tomorrow. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Many years ago I used to write a blog...and here it is again! I went down a bit of a rabbit hole about the Crown of Thorns, encompassing one of my favourite novels, and a much-missed Tweeting nun. stromnessdragon.wordpress.com/2026/04/18/t...
The Crown of Thorns
I was doing some reading recently about the Crown of Thorns, (or, as Billy Connollyonce described it, the ‘jaggy bunnet’). My initial interest was to see if I could find out what species of plant t…
stromnessdragon.wordpress.com
Great piece of work here 👏🏻
Between them ‘Municipal Gothic’ and ‘Intervals of Darkness’ have 27 stories full of haunted buildings, haunted people, and working class weirdness. Obviously *I* think they're great – but so do strangers who owe me nothing! 👉 www.amazon.co.uk/Municipal-Go... 👉 www.amazon.co.uk/Intervals-Da...
Doing some reading on artwork featuring the four Evangelists. Found this one of Mark with his lion breaking the fourth wall 🦁 😆
I’m researching saints for a book I’m writing. Found this gem 🙏😇
In Scotland we've had wildlife on some of our money since 2016 and the country doesn't seem to have fallen
Yes, hello, is that God? Yeah, hi. I have a complaint. You gave me this brain that’s designed for finding berries and avoiding lions and now people are ‘just circling back’ to see if we can ‘move the needle’ on ‘key initiatives’? NONE of those things are berries.