A little bit of the brilliant Sienna Aurora Clarke singing “Unstoppable” from the teenage jiu jitsu suffragette musical I’m writing with
@JimmyLongfoot
🔥🎉🥋💪✨
Filmed by
@ianbowkett
at the Stiles+Drewe Best New Song Prize final… Reply if you want to see some more! 🙌
My 6 year old daughter, all year:
"Can we go to Pizza Express?"
"Can we go to Pizza Express?"
"Can we go to Pizza Express?"
After we go to Pizza Express:
"That wasn't Pizza Express"
Me: "Err...?"
Her: "It was just a restaurant. I THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE A TRAIN"
We took our 2-year-old to vote this morning. She wanted to join in, so we made her a voting slip of her own. Manifestos as follows:
- HONEY FOR ALL
- MORE BOUNCING
- UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO HAYCORNS
She told us who she voted for, to make sure we all do lots of bouncing later.
On way to breakfast this morning...
Hotel Congierge: "Are you a space man?"
My daughter: "I'm a space lady, actually"
Me: 😳😍🤘🚀
This is what happens when you take your kid to
@CheltSciFest
#tinyastronaut
#CheltSciFest
It’s “Dress As A Scientist” day at school and my daughter has been inspired by Maggie Aderin Pocock to go in wearing her favourite galaxy-covered party dress.
Scientists can look like - and wear - anything!
Hurray! 🔭👩🔬
My 4 year old wants to do zoom interviews with female scientists, makers and engineers for our family's International Women's Day project tomorrow... I've scientists coming out of my ears but do any makers/engineers have 10 mins to answer her carefully crafted clipboard of Qs?
Wild news!
Someone has actually given me some actual money to develop one of the musical theatre shows I'm working on. Thank you, Jane Goodman Writing Fund and
@MercuryMusicals
😍
Prepare your ears for science, space, and smashing the patriarchy later this year... 🚀
My 4 year old: "MUMMY I NEED TO MAKE A MARS ROVER RIGHT NOW"
15 minutes later: "FINISHED! I GAVE HER A BOW TIE BECAUSE I COULD."
Marks out of 10 for accuracy
@a_hutty
? 🤣
Behold, the face of someone who only knows the name of one single ancient Greek historian and it almost unbelievably turned out to be the right answer on tonight’s
#ChristmasUniversityChallenge
Musical Theatre singers who are in a place where they might be happy singing some songs from a new show about badass women at a daytime showcase in London for travel expenses, a nice lunch and my eternal servitude… please place a hand in the air?
🙋♀️
The first post in a new series:
"Conversations with our 18 month old daughter”
👩: Can you say "Mummy"?
👶: "Daddy"
👩: Not quite... Say "Mummy" ?
👶: "Daddy"
👩: Try again... Can you say "Mummy"?
👶: “Boobies"
So that's me told.
Our daughter is 3 soon.
She wants a
@CBeebiesHQ
Numberblocks cake, obv.
Does she want a Numberblock 3 cake? Does she heck.
She's asked for either Numberblock 20 or *nothing*.
She's also given several reasons why she wants 20 rather than 3.
Can you guess what they are...?
Offered without comment… apart from saying that whoever is buying our book,
@standupmaths
' book,
@robinince
&
@ProfBrianCox
's book can you PLEASE STOP buying Alfie Boe / Michael Ball CDs, it is messing up our algorithms:
Do you actually know how to flush a toilet? Turns out no-one does, so I wrote a song about it... in a stream...
Hope it makes you think how to waste less water and help
#SaveOurStreams
with
@AffinityWater
.
Get yourself some free water saving devices at
Good news! My daughter’s school has arranged a meeting with Santa... on Microsoft Teams 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
“Hello little girl, you’re on mute”
“Next slide please, elves”
“Rudolph stop using the wifi, you can watch Frozen 2 again later”
“Christmas lists in the chat window please”
etc
Absolutely batshit news... the title song from our musical based on
@iszi_lawrence
's teenage jiu jitsu suffragette novel - The Unstoppable Letty Pegg - is up for Best New Song 2023.
Come see it live on Mon 13th Nov, with 11 others songs by these BEYOND brilliant teams! 🥰
✨Best New Song Prize 2023✨
MMD and
@StilesandDrewe
are delighted to announce the finalists of this year’s Stiles + Drewe Best New Song Prize, which will be celebrated in concert at
@TheOtherPalace
on Mon 13th Nov 2023.
Tickets are on sale NOW:
Time to live tweet our
#UniversityChallenge
episode!
Already doing spectacularly, I had 8.30 in the diary not 8pm, so expect this to be sketchy.
Big up my teammates before we start! Captain
@anjahuja
@Tweetisaurus
and
@marksilcox
. The best of Imperial (available at the time)
UPDATE: when we left after breakfast, the same concierge gave a full army salute and said "Enjoy your day on Mars, Commander" so now
@MGalleryQueens
are our favourite Cheltenham hotel
#spaceladies
I'm about to ride the footplate of an actual steam engine my husband thinks this is legit the nerdiest thing I have ever done... I'm not convinced but am also so excited I can't think of anything else I've ever done right now.
Finally I am super-proud to announce a show that came from a twitter chat about Helens who talk about science on stage...
"The Night That Launched A Thousand Ships"
It's on Sunday 27th October, and IT'S ON* AN ACTUAL BOAT! *
* = technically UNDER
Science! Synthesizers! Sand Reckoners! Screws! Superb Orchestral playing! Stellar new music! More things that begin with S! In the capital city of WaleS! AlSo yourS truly! YeSSSSS!
Well that fell apart sooner than I expected, but I can guarantee this concert will be aweSome 👍
Synthesizers, Science and Symphonies! 🎵
Fusing electronic and orchestral music with Archimedes’ principles, join The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, Helen Arney and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for a unique concert 🤩
26 November 7:30pm
This is MY DREAM COME TRUE!!! People from all over the world are duetting with me on Tom Lehrer's "Elements" (with my extra verse including the 16 new ones not in the original song...)
AND A BRASS BAND! 🎺
Well worth a couple of your minutes to celebrate worldwide endeavour.
#IYPT2019
is coming to a close, and we're ending on a song!
@HelenArney
and
@WaterbeachBand
– joined by chemists, science communicators and students from around the world – bring Tom Lehrer's Elements Song up to date. Keep watching for the full credits!
Musical Theatre people with a STEMM background (performers, writers, composers, creatives, directors, producers and more) pls make yourselves known or tag others here
⬇️🧪🔬🚀🌿⚗️🍮🧊🔥🪨🦎💫🌻📏📐🧮💻⬇️
Happy New Year!
I'm off twitter for January so here's my decade summary:
- Still writing & performing funny, sciencey songs (📷
@Chooban
/Talie Shaw at
#ninelessons
)
- Produced 3 DVDs, 0.5 books, 1 toddler
- Married a nice chap
Here's to another 10.
Years, not chaps...
FYI any families with a chromecast system, know that EVERYONE ELSE CAN SEE WHAT YOU ARE WATCHING from their cast tab.
Yes, I am "watching" sewing patterns on the projector in the loft while my husband watches kids TV shows.
We both know we are living our best lives right now.
No sh*t I've been one third of
@FOTSN
for 10 years!
Thank you everyone who has been to a show, watched our comedy specials, listened to our podcast, and cheered us along 😍
Now PLEASE buy our remaining DVDs so I can have our spare room back for sewing cos I'm an old lady now 👵
We are 10 years old!
That's right, our first show with
@standupmaths
@helenarney
@moulds
as Festival of the Spoken Nerd was 10 years ago this month. 🎉
We can't have a party, so instead all our DVDs and downloads are £π (£3.14) at 📀🤓
#FOTSN10
Off to spend all my supermarket and boots points on food and sanitary products for our local foodbank. Do you have points you can use to do the same near you?
We have an anazing foodbank service in Lewisham run by Carol and the team but we'd all rather it wasn't needed...
Excellent! My mission in life is to have to explain the same to my 2-year old daughter. Going well so far - she currently thinks only women can go to space... Probably something to do with her astronaut toys Sally, Mae, Valentina and "HelenSharman"...
#WomenInSTEM
Unwitting friend: "So Helen, what are you doing to stay sane in this seemingly endless lockdown-homeschool-maternity-leave combo?"
Me: "CRAFTING DISNEY VOODOO DOLLS"
Ooooooooh just spotted that Crossness Pumping Station have an open day in a few weeks...
Probably the most elegant sewage pumping station you will ever lay eyes on.
As promised, another baby tweet. This one is about a giant sized baby vomit that I caught with my boobs and now ALL my clothes are in the bath except for one of my socks.
I attach no photos. No-one needs that.
Baby now cooing happily in crib looking very pleased with self. 🙄
@sophie_e_hill
@singoutoftheark
@EverydaySexism
May I offer my services as a lyricist to update this from its 1950s styling? I am pretty sure that with about 10 minutes work I can get them up to the early 1990s... Half a day and we could push through to a whole new millenium!
Happy birthday
@robinince
! The man who has a dozen brilliant ideas every day then actually makes the best ones happen - not just for himself, but for other people too. My working life would be far less enjoyable without everything he has done, and I'd be half as entertained too.
@thephysicsgirl
Hello! We have footage of a tennis ball on fire flying in a perfect parabola thanks to
@standupmaths
in one of our
@fotsn
shows - looks like this when frames all collated:
GOOD MORNING.
IT IS 7AM. I AM IN A TAXI WITH A BOX OF PROPS.
TONIGHT WE PLAY THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL!
But first an 8.30am rigging call. Hoping my hair calms down by then. Tix still available if you want to find out what we're suspending from the roof...
TWITTER! You excel at this kind of question.
Name your fave extraordinary women in STEM 👩🔬 who (as far as you know...) have NOT featured as the central character in a movie, play or musical. Books and documentaries are fine.
EG: NOT Mary Anning but YES Gertrude Labib Nassim 👍
I’m not saying we watch to much Hey Duggee with our daughter, but now every time we have a cuddle she whispers "DUGGEE HUG" in my ear before she lets go...
#heyduggee
Solving kiddo’s school Christmas Jumper day by sewing a felt santa hat onto her favourite dinosaur.
TIME TO MAINLINE THE
@TimHarford
CAUTIONARY TALES WHILE I’M SEWING AND THE BABY IS ASLEEP! 😃
Do I dare waste a precious two minutes making a cup of tea first...?
My toddler made a pancake collage at her favourite
@ConservatoireSE
class - Little Art Venture Club - yesterday morning... We took it to
@M_Creperie
just down the road and she asked for a REAL pancake just like it. They did a pretty good job!
#pancakeart
#customersforlife
Thank you to the boatload of brilliant women who video called with us yesterday. I felt almost like I had seen some actual real people for a change, and my daughter declared "I AM A MAKER AND I AM GOING TO BUILD A SILVER TREBUCHET TO LAUNCH RAINBOW DRAGONS INTO BELLE'S LIBRARY"
Staying at home this weekend?
Spend it with HD downloads of me,
@MouldS
and
@standupmaths
in our three science comedy specials.
They're just £π each (yep, £3.14) for 5 hours of shows and 10 hours of extras.
Plus a double DVD offer if you work in education!
Happy Pi Day!
We're irrationally celebrating the date of 3.14 with two offers at the Spoken Nerd shop:
- Three HD downloads for just £3π (£9.42)
- Pi Five! Two DVDs and three downloads for £5π, or half price if you're in education (£7.86 plus p&p)
You know your podcast is a success when you get cold emails from companies wanting you to advertise their new range of male grooming equipment.
Thanks mate, but if you want someone to plug your electric ball trimmers you need to ask elsewhere... 😂
⚾⚾
IT'S TONIGHT!
8.30pm on BBC2, watch our victory / indignity.
I'll be live tweeting all the behind the scenes stuff I can think of from about 8.15... see you back here then!
Recorded some episodes of A Podcast Of Unnecessary Detail today with
@standupmaths
@MouldS
and new
@FOTSN
crew addition, producer
@jondharvey
. We talked squid, coal, health and safety, plasmids, caffeine and... bagels?
First shows out 2020, get the feed
In other news, my lovely friend married her lovely fiancee at the weekend and my lovely toddler is still randomly saying the phrase we taught her for the occasion. there's little more disturbing than hearing "Happy Wedding Fran And Debs!" on the baby monitor after bedtime...