Bit of a random blog post but perhaps one of the topics I feel currently strongest about. I despise this government. Sadly I've also given up my Labour party membership as their aims are not ambitious enough (I DO NOT have any energy for entering a Corbyn/Starmer debate. That is old, stale, overdone shit. That... Continue Reading →
Invitation to the Salt Lick online book launch
Please join me for the online launch of Salt Lick, on publication day, 16 September, 7.30 pm To receive the Zoom link, register here At last something that began years ago, with a song about wild animals in a shopping mall and the idea of a man in prison imagining the inside of his body as a landscape... Continue Reading →
Peace in the Valley Once Again
Who has thought about the songs for their funeral? This post is about one of mine. I think about death often. I write this as I am wandering through one of my favourite places, Woodvale Cemetery in Brighton on England's south coast. As I walk, I think about lost beloveds, mine across the world, and... Continue Reading →
hup, hup, whities, stop sitting on the defensive
If you are a writer, a reader, a poet, a book lover and you are on Twitter, the chances are you will have caught a row about an author called out for racist writing and the many people (of whiteness and establishment) who have stepped in to decry the accusation. People of colour have, with... Continue Reading →
Rotten Turnips
"I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be out there in one of those fluorescent-jacketed chain gangs visibly paying your debt to society". Spite is a damaging emotion, burning both sides of its sour equation. Spite creates division. And god knows, division is not in short supply at this time. Johnson’s government are acting... Continue Reading →
Becalmed
Or: How I think about writing my books, without words getting in the way This is a picture of Isolde. Or at least a version of Isolde. She doesn’t ride a cow at any point in Salt Lick. Making pictures like this helps me write my novels. Not so I know what characters or places... Continue Reading →
Ten Weeks and Three Score Years – the future is coming
It is ten weeks until my second novel Salt Lick is published. As we move towards that future date, I wanted to look at the path the story of Salt Lick takes into its own imagined future. It is set some years from now in a world that is in many ways easily recognisable. The... Continue Reading →
Oh England, my lionhearts*
I dreaded today. I dreaded a familiar feeling of disappointment and let-down, the longing for a new season to start so that with luck some of the grime of failure could be wiped away by a good season for my team. I dreaded a day trying to avoid belligerence and bitterness about what should clearly... Continue Reading →
Haturdays – final hat
I have been quiet on the Haturday front as I have been busy editing my book Salt Lick (I’m pleased to say it is now ready for publication on 16th September.) But I still have one more hat to make. It is to honour and remember the women killed in the time of lockdown and... Continue Reading →
On a Scale of One to Dead
I see the smiling face of a young woman, whose name will lodge uneasily in my memory, perhaps long after I remember that it is there because she was murdered. I wish I could do something, save her, hold her hand. There is no way to react that seems appropriate, there is no correct response. ... Continue Reading →
