Blogs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fyzd/im-an-alcoholic-inside-recovery Alcoholics Anonymous is 75 years old. The first meeting was advertised in The Financial Times (other newspapers wouldn’t allow such advertisements) and held in The Dorchester Hotel in 1947. Around 5000 meetings take place every day in the South East of England. Deepfake technology allows some of these alcoholics to tell their stories. I’m already familiar with them. I...

Goodness these seem to come around very quickly. Still, no complaints here: some very good writing this week. Story of the Week In the prose department, I should name check monodemo’s Imagine , Charlie 77’s Behind 1 & 2, Mark Say’s Ghost Village and CSquirrel’s hilarious The Community Water Officer 1 & 2. However, I do have a particular fondness for Maddan’s sequence of monthly horror stories and so this week’s Story of the Week is his...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fhl5/surge I watch lots of films. I guess it’s a way of turning off my mind. A passive acquiescence. But I found Surge , claustrophobic. The plots of most stories are quite simple. Make it hard for the protagonist. And I’m not going to go into that thing of there only being seven basic types. Joseph (Ben Whishaw of This is Going to Hurt ) has a shitty job. He works in security at a London airport. He...

I usually pick up these wee books from the library every year. Anybody that has written anything knows the feeling of triumph at being published. They are published by Scottish Book Trust. And they’re free. The paradox of free stuff is snob value. If it’s free, it must be shite. Almost thirty stories and poems in five sections—Community legends, Making it home, Origin Stories, Finding my place and Tales to treasure—and not one dud. Most stories...

Sam Knight reminds the reader, I’m not just making this up. I believe him. I love this kind of wacky stuff and read it in one go. But when Knight tells the reader what psychiatrist John Barker was thinking about when he was flying into New York in the mid-sixties, he’s writing fiction. It’s the kind of world Stephen King writes about and asks questions like how can we know what we do not know? In one of King’s novels, the protagonist sets out to...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001d3jv/the-ice-cream-wars-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001d3lb/the-ice-cream-wars-series-1-episode-2 Start with the big stuff. Headlines that grab your attention—and demand something needs to be done. The murders of six members of the Doyle family in April 1984, which included a baby and fourteen-year-old boy in Bankend Street in the north-east of Glasgow, elicits that guttural...

I read. That’s what I do. I’ve got books in the toilet. In the kitchen and hall. Down the side of my chair and in my van, stashed behind the passenger seat. I no longer keep a book in the glove compartment. I’m not therefore an addict. Before deaths and Amens, there’s a line that goes something like this: lead us not into temptation and out of our boozers and strip clubs, or away from offers of half-priced drugs because it’s Black Friday on a...

spotted a fe in night trance kitty farouk the big cat ben the prancing pug Ben my nephew ben dimond 'ben the 2 of us ...michael jackson had a pet friendly RAT but my nephew ben is a good dog ha the every spotted mandybird whizzes and flitters a cheery phoenix peacock NAYNA WHERE IZZY NAYNA FROM RED LEICESTER VIA THE PUNJAB JUDITH SCHAUFELD HAD A MIXED RACE FRIEND izzy from england brown girl english mum moroccan dad judy also had an artist...