Blogs

'Fairy Tales & Fables'

Firstly, many thanks to everyone who has been kind enough to follow the stories about Josiah and Archibald (and now Samantha) my Undertakers. Those of you who have been following the stories will know that the plot has been thickening more than somewhat, particularly over the festive season, with Josiah now engaged to Samantha and Archibald under threat of training and development! The latest story 'It is better to have loved, and lost...and...

Fabulous writing to choose from this week…not least the bumper crop from today alone. Despite being spoilt for choice, this week’s stand-outs for me are: Poem of the Week is Welkin Spirit by Penny4athought. It satisfies all my poetic desires. https://www.abctales.com/story/penny4athought/welkin-spirit Story of the Week is TJW’s profound and brilliant writing of ‘GOODBYE, SOUL BROTHER or The Cavalry of Ten Thousand Horses - I: The Green Hell / 6...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hhfc/storyville-three-minutes-a-lengthening I’m a fan of Storyville. There have been lots of documentaries on recently to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 th January. The date is chosen to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. There are two stories here which wind around three minutes of film, but which takes over sixty minutes to tell. The first story...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dm3cwv/the-us-and-the-holocaust-series-1-1-the-golden-door-beginnings1938 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dm3fnf/the-us-and-the-holocaust-series-1-2-yearning-to-breathe-free-19381942 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dm3gdg/the-us-and-the-holocaust-series-1-3-the-homeless-tempesttossed-1942- https://dirkdeklein.net/2022/01/20/the-wannsee-conference-minutes/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/dreamland In one of Flannery O’Connor’s most famous short stories ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find,’ the grandmother doesn’t want to go to Florida on vacation. This is the era of the Great Depression in America. She rattles on about this fellow that’s escaped from the State Pen, ‘The Misfit’. She doesn’t want to go anywhere with such a fellow ‘aloose’. Dreamland has Alison Wells (Margot Robbie) aloose with a $10...

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...

I’ve seen the film, now I’ve read the book. Yeh, I know that’s the wrong order. Books are better. But I got there in the end. That gives me a pivot to spin on and talk about endings being beginnings. When you’re young, you never think you’ll get old. And when you’re old you never think about dying, until you have to. ‘Make death proud to take you.’ I’ve hung that out there. A quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar . Noodles is the man for quotes...