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The lights are up and the tree is decorated. The cozy feel of Christmas is settling around me…but it is not the shopping or the presents brightly wrapped that I’m thinking of… it’s family and friends and the kindness we can give to one another….the gathering at the table…the laughter as we reminisce… the smiles, the tears…and the comfort of their presence that moves me….and fills me with warmth. Christmas has become too commercial but just...

We are delighted to announce that the first poet we will be working with to publish a collection of their work is Simon (JupiterMoon) Howarth. Congratulations, Simon. Can’t wait to get started! And there are still opportunities for more poets to become involved. We are particularly interested to hear individual, idiosyncratic voices with something new to say. Make your submission today.

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 15 Dec 2017 There's been an absolute blizzard of great writing lately, well done everyone and keep them coming. If you've been housebound you'll appreciate some reads to curl up with and I think these will fit the bill. Story of the week comes from Truth 42 with a thoroughly enjoyable read: https://www.abctales.com/story/truth42/agony-and-ecstacy We get three for the price of one with our poem of the week - Noo's...

There's been an absolute blizzard of great writing lately, well done everyone and keep them coming. If you've been housebound you'll appreciate some reads to curl up with and I think these will fit the bill. Story of the week comes from Truth 42 with a thoroughly enjoyable read: https://www.abctales.com/story/truth42/agony-and-ecstacy We get three for the price of one with our poem of the week - Noo's dark triptych: https://www.abctales.com/...

Go on, I dare you. You will not feel out of place if you go on your own. I saw it yesterday and most of the audience were my age or older. Only a few had rounded up a child or grandchild. Good inventive slap-bear-stick. A varied set of real and imaginary views of London, Paddington Station, the Shard and showground with a mystery object that leads our innocent marmalade-head to aargh! prison. Don't want to give away any more but it's...

Nobody that's a nobody ever asks what are you writing? There’s no reason to think I’m writing anything. But if that nobody ever did ask I’ve got a ready-mix answer. I’m writing about us, and I’m trying to get it right. Elena Ferrante writes again and again about Naples. Its crude dialect and its even cruder people who are not to be trusted, even among themselves, especially by themselves. Here are some crude notes about this novel and its place...

http://www.chrisleslie.com/portfolios/red-road-underground/ As part of Book Scotland I went to talk Chris Leslie gave in Clydebank library. He overran a wee bit but I could have listened to him all night. Disappearing Glasgow is about us. Glasgow’s full of ghosts, one of the punters in his book says. And they’ve all got the same refrain – that used to be my house. I always presumed the Red Road flats would last forever, but when you see it now...

Leggings; New Early Morning Deliveries. For about a week now someone has been ghosting the building late on, asking for Ecstasy. Always turned away, no one here has the stuff. Luckily I've not been asked. I think she's sticking to those she knows, no matter how slightly. Today I'm rudely awoken again, the first time here – the loudest man is shouting my first name... continuously. It jolts me out of sleep and half here, I hear him shout it again...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04thmv7/blue-planet-ii-series-1-1... The Golden Record carried by the Voyager I spacecraft by NASA on the infinitesimally small chance that it would bump into an alien lifeform that would be able to understand it missed a trick. They should have just sent David Attenborough. He would have told them we live in a wee blue planet, seventy percent water that we’re heating up like an egg. Then David could whip...

First heard this on Radio 4 a few years back, now re-reading it.I love stories that give me something new and since I have never lived in a big posh Parisian apartment block... The narrators take turns. Renee the concierge was a poor farm girl. She married a local lad and they moved to town. He died young, she continued working and living in her tied flat and at 54 she has a long-term prickly view of the residents who take her for granted as a...