Blogs

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 30 Jun 2017 Two very contrasting Picks for this week! Our Poem of the Week is Rosa Cruz's 'Bluebottle Triptych'. It manages to be beautiful, truly poetic, and almost forensically descriptive, all at the same time. One to be read again and again: https://www.abctales.com/story/rosa-cruz/bluebottle-triptych Story of the Week is MJG's funny, warm-hearted and optimistic 'Condoms for Cornwall'. It will strike a chord with...

Two very contrasting Picks for this week! Our Poem of the Week is Rosa Cruz's 'Bluebottle Triptych'. It manages to be beautiful, truly poetic, and almost forensically descriptive, all at the same time. One to be read again and again: https://www.abctales.com/story/rosa-cruz/bluebottle-triptych Story of the Week is MJG's funny, warm-hearted and optimistic 'Condoms for Cornwall'. It will strike a chord with anyone with memories of their first...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08w9lvb/storyville-tokyo-girls This is creepy and weird. Japan is the kind of insular society that a oriental version of Nigel Farage would approve. In stereotypical fashion the Japanese are polite, but they don’t like foreigners much and tend to stick to their own kind. But they have an aging population and the number of births falls lower every year. Tokyo has one of the highest population densities in the...

This is simple fiction based on a first-person account of what if, running to almost 500 pages. In a way it fits in with other books I’ve been reading, with the idea of the self and better self, living the same life, but making different -moral- choices. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century was at it quoting reams of Balzac and the conundrum if you needed to torture a Chinese person on the other side of the world, to get what you...

I am a huge fan of well-wisher's excellent children's poems and stories, and I didn't realise he'd published some of them until I read this very funny book plug today: https://www.abctales.com/story/well-wisher/sad-poetry-book .. so I thought it deserved a place on the front page for a while. If you have children I can thoroughly recommend the poems!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08tb97c/the-summer-of-love-how-hippies-changed-the-world-series-1-episode-1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08tr64x/the-summer-of-love-how-hippies-changed-the-world-series-1-episode-2 I loved this nostalgic look back at the The Summer of Love and How Hippies Changed the World, but I think there should be a question mark at the end of it. I was five in 1967. Pyjamas had not been commercialised to the...

Story of the Week goes to 'Very Beret', a fascinating and exceptionally glittery piece of life writing by Noo, with two honourable mentions for well-wisher's 'Pareidolia', and skinner_jennifer's 'United in an Ancient Wood'. Poem of the Week is camilla's outstanding 'The Reproachful Muse' which has stayed with me. Please read all of the above if you haven't already: https://www.abctales.com/story/noo/very-beret https://www.abctales.com/story/...

I was looking for a review I’d written for John Cornwell’s autobiography Seminary Boy , a fabulous book, but it seems I haven’t written it. Nor have I written a review for The Hiding Places of God (Powers of Darkness, Powers of Light). An unsettling book. These are sins of omission. Ah, you may ask, what do you mean by sin? That’s really the crux of this book. My personal definition of sin is selfishness. Selfishness in thought or deed or word...

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 16 Jun 2017 Even though there's been some brilliant writing on the site this week, london_calling79's 'A Letter To My New Tory MP' stood out immediately. We're not a political site and members have all sorts of different views, but the humanity, compassion and reason of this piece shine a light in times that seem to get darker and grimmer ever day: https://www.abctales.com/story/londoncalling79/letter-my-new-tory-mp...

Even though there's been some brilliant writing on the site this week, london_calling79's 'A Letter To My New Tory MP' stood out immediately. We're not a political site and members have all sorts of different views, but the humanity, compassion and reason of this piece shine a light in times that seem to get darker and grimmer ever day: https://www.abctales.com/story/londoncalling79/letter-my-new-tory-mp Poem of the week is another remarkable...