Blogs

Our next reading event will be held in Nottingham on Saturday, September 5 th from 7pm at The Cross Keys, 15 Byard Lane, Nottingham, NG1 2GJ. If you haven’t joined us before, it’s a laid-back, sociable event with the opportunity to meet other members and enjoy live poetry and fiction from some fabulous writers. If you fancy making a weekend of it, Nottingham is home to world class sport and steeped in the legends of Robin Hood. There are lots of...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02tc97z/cordon-episode-1 I’m a bit of a cultural snob. I loved Wallander . Then The Killing . And I’d a brief fling with 1874 . Now I’ve gone all Flemish and I’m six episodes into Cordon . It’s a very simple premise: what if a disease as contagious as Ebola arrived in a city like Antwerp and the authorities decided to seal off that zone for 48 hours. Then that time frame is extended. Those inside the cordon...

Labour should drop the drawbridge between Oxbridge and the House of Commons and allow its putative MPs to mingle with the common herd. The thaumaturgic touch may heal the collective illusion of knowing what they’re doing. The third world war has begun – it’s called global warning. Labour should stop the Panda watch at Edinburgh zoo which costs hundreds of thousands of pounds and subsidises the Chinese economy. We should import polar bears. A...

This week's winning story is told from the perspective of a young girl and the narrator's voice is utterly convincing. Fantastic sentiments on show but never sentimental. Well done love_writing for: Bottle Johnny The contributions from the poets this week has made picking a winning submission nigh on impossible. In the end I had to settle on a tie between Last Request by EB: Last Request it's a poem that at once touches on minute details and...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b061vbdj/children-of-the-gaza-war Yet another war in Gaza. The third war in six years. Hamas has been sending rockets into Israel. Killing indiscriminately. Israel invades, but it’s a mismatch. It’s not street to street fighting. Israel controls the sky and coastline. They have the latest technology and are fearful of picking up troop casualties and the backlash which would entail. Overwhelming force. War by...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b061c786/a-song-for-jenny This is a drama about a mother’s grief. Twenty-four-year- old Jenny (Nicola Wren) brought alive in flashbacks was blown up in an underground train on 7 th July 2005, ten years today, passing through Edgware Road tube station whilst reading C.S.Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew . We don’t know this, but since she was always reading, sent her mum Julie (Emily Watson) an email telling her...

Thornwood (Steve) in AbcTales posts I hope the Tories have a change of heart about the planned cuts. 38 Degrees send me an email suggesting I contribute money so they can take out advertisements extorting George Osborne to think again. Dream on. Notes on poverty (in no particular order). Orwell suggest we need to state the obvious. Richard Hoggart wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier . 'Each decade we shiftily declare that we have buried class; each...

Long-time ABCtaler and editor, sid took on the incredibly difficult task of scrutinising the June submissions. Here’s what sid has to say: * Having been away for a long time, being assigned the task of choosing June’s picks of the month was a daunting privilege. On the other hand, there’s no better way to get inspired after a long drought than reading through a month’s worth of fantastic submissions. To single out just two was an agonising...

A reminder to pop back at 7pm tonight to find out our fabulous Monthly Picks!

Director, Maurice Linnane http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l4929 There is currently a new film documentary out about Amy Winehouse. Since her death she seems to have become more popular. I don’t listen to music. I’ve read more about Amy Whitehouse than I’ve heard her voice. There she was in the pages of some tabloid falling over drunk, or out of her face on drugs, or both. Reams of newsprint on her boyfriend who went to jail because he was...