marandina's blog

Start Writing Fiction – Free Online Course through the Open University So you wanna be a writer? Well, I do. I imagine you do as well or you wouldn’t be reading this. Everyone comes at creative writing from different angles, for different reasons and with different backgrounds in terms of prior learning. Not everyone has been through university and earned a degree in creative writing. I certainly haven’t (even if my son has). Having been back at...

For the Love of Libraries One of my fondest memories from childhood is of my local library. It’s the one in Kingstanding, Birmingham. I fell in love with reading through the first book I tackled on my own: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Despite the personal flaws of the author himself, his stories transported me to another place and another time. I will forever be a fan of his work. I can still see the book shelves loaded with...

Follow the Money – How Much Does Britain Cost? (2023) By Paul Johnson The truth is, I like money. Before you raise pitchforks and burning torches in the air and chase me through the village, the reason I like moolah is because I had next to none growing up. Things were so tight as a teenager, I used to buy cigarettes in singles from the corner shop over the road. Life has been better to me since those days of deprivation but, the point is, most...

It’s Beginning to Look… The truth is, I just love Christmas. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but, for me, it’s one of the things my parents did well. I am the eldest of four boys and…man….we were a pain on Christmas Day. We would only make it to 5.30am and then barrel down the stairs. Our Christmas tree was always awash with presents and we would open them in a jumble of arms and legs, wrapping paper flying in all directions. Mum and dad...

When the story first broke about the changes to Roald Dahl’s books for children, I was as outraged as everyone else. So Augustus Gloop in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was no longer to be “enormously fat” but simply “enormous”. Mrs Twit in “The Twits” was changed from being “ugly and beastly” to just “beastly”. Lots of people have weighed in on the debate including Salman Rushdie, Brian Cox, Ricky Jervais and even Rishi Sunak has expressed...

A Eulogy for a Collie To anyone that read my recent piece about Eric aka Skye the collie woofer my grateful thanks. https://www.abctales.com/story/marandina/eric-viking This was intended as an homage to my dog and border collies in general, what with him 16 going on 17 years old. Sadly, not long after writing it, Eric succumbed to old age and is no longer with us. I guess the point of writing this is that dogs don’t get funerals. It’s either...

Notes on writing We all write for different reasons. I returned to ABCTales in October 2020 after a hiatus of fourteen years. In my case, it was an attempt to process two recent deaths of people close to me. That first story came and went. I felt a bit better for it, self-disclosure not being my strong suit. Then things kinda went from there and as a senior member on here remarked one day, I had the “bug” of posting. 2022 was kind to me. A...

https://www.abctales.com/story/marandina/final-message-moscow To anyone that has read my recent story about my son’s homecoming from Moscow my genuine thanks. In the story I referred to an unpublished allegory of sorts. This is the piece I wrote on 28 th February 2022. Having read it back, it’s still appears to be mostly current which is a reflection of how the conflict has become bogged down in attrition. Again, I hope sense prevails soon and...

When I saw the trailer for TV drama “The Terror” I couldn’t help thinking that this is something right up my street – historical drama with an element of the supernatural. I started viewing on BBC iPlayer and ended up binge watching all 10 episodes. This is a show with a heavyweight cast – Jared Harris ( Chernobyl, The Expanse ), Ciaran Hinds ( Munich, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ), Tobias Mendes ( Outlander ) and Ian Hart ( Finding...

Time waits for no man and there’s nothing that marks the advancing years more noticeably than a movie. Some hold up well; others not so much. A genre where this is as relevant as any other is horror. “An American Werewolf in London (1981)” is a seminal offering directed by John Landis. When backpackers Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) and David Kessler (David Naughton) take refuge at “The Slaughtered Lamb” – an inn in the deepest, bleakest part of...