Harriet Smart

Author of the Northminster Mysteries and apprentice seamstress.

[Lucy Easthope @LucyGoBag]

Summer reads sorted ✔️

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@thomasknox Time to start a finishing school.

[Darren of Plymouth @DarrenPlymouth]

Yep.

[Marysia @marysia_cc]

Toshiko Hishida (Japan, b. 1961)
A Glass (1997)

[Gareth Roberts @OldRoberts953]

#blakes7names

[Rosemary Griggs @RAGriggsauthor]

#textiletuesday

Stunningly depicted embroidery on Elizabeth’s sumptuous gown. At the wonderful Elizabeth 1 Queen and Court exhibition at the Philip Mould Gallery.

ENGLISH SCHOOL
Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), 1590s

#elizabeth1 #embroidery #art

[The potting shed @GardenerFliss]

Love, love, love 💜

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@upstalbeam @TheSimonEvansX Coming from the Midlands the juxtaposition of Droitwich and Oslo is magnificent.

[Michiel @upstalbeam]

@TheSimonEvansX RIP, could be received in the Netherlands, Belgium and France as well (unless you drive into a tunnel).

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@TheSimonEvansX https://t.co/OvMqqsHVkN
Well, that's the morning gone...

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@TheSimonEvansX I do wish I still had the monster radio of my childhood that lived on the breakfast room book shelves and had many mysterious names on it. It also glowed.

[TheSimonEvansX @TheSimonEvansX]

A very lovely eulogy.

I don’t know why exactly but I clearly remember registering the name “Droitwich” on the long wave dial on the old radio-gramophone that we had for many years before it was replaced by a “music centre”. RIP, old mast.

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@singingbirth I often thank my appliances personally.

[Bri @singingbirth]

None of you are appreciating your sinks and ovens and bathtubs and washing machines enough, I promise

[Lissa Evans @LissaKEvans]

This was a winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Prize for the Opening Sentence for the Worst of All Possible Novels (the novels in question being imaginary) and I think it’s rather marvellous…

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@LissaKEvans Imagine that as a creative writing class prompt! Love it.

[Dennis Noel Kavanagh @Jebadoo2]

Years later and it’s still the best ever typo on here

[Diana Alastair💚🤍💜 ⚢ ❌❌✡️ @sappholives83]

Most homeless people can’t handle normal life. That’s why they’re homeless. If you just stick them in housing, they often fail to thrive - and that’s a polite way of saying that they trash the place and don’t take care of themselves - because their real problem isn’t homelessness, it’s mental illness. The homelessness is just a symptom.

You can medicate them, of course, but you can’t force compliance, and as we all know, it’s not uncommon for people who are mentally ill to stop taking their medication. And the medication doesn’t help them deal with any trauma - because the rate of rape among homeless women is as close to 100% as makes no nevermind - or the addiction issues that are so prevalent in the homeless population.

The hard truth is that most homeless people can’t handle housing without the kind of supplementary support and supervision that we simply cannot provide. They need people who can enforce compliance with hygiene and cleanliness standards, who can ensure that they eat regularly and appropriately, and who can restrain them should they become violent. They need, in short, to be institutionalized.

I realize, of course, that this will provoke outrage. Mental hospitals have an ugly history — but that history does not have to be repeated. We cannot provide the kind of supervision and intervention that is so often needed while patients live in regular housing, but that does not mean that institutions must be abusive or unpleasant places to live.

I would argue that a properly run institution would provide a much better life for people with severe mental illness than the streets. It’s flat cruel to force these people to fend for themselves when many of them can’t even tell you what year it is, and their suffering is made worse by their inevitable exposure to drugs and alcohol, which they use to self-medicate, or to escape from their misery. In a hospital, the only drugs they’d have access to would be prescribed by doctors and handed out by nurses.

[Harriet Smart @Fictionwitch]

@sappholives83 And that is why mental hospitals were called asylums because they offered a peaceful place for people who couldn't cope.

[Karen Tennents girl 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 💙 @karen_flynn]

This Pallus’s cat has just arrived in Edinburgh for a conservation project
She looks Scottish already
My pal called her Springburn Bagpuss
😂😂🤣❤️