Around seventy years ago, Mahmood Mattan was hanged for the murder of Lily Volpert, a shopkeeper, who happened to be Jewish and under five-foot tall. His conviction was found to be unsafe by the three Appeal Court judges in 1998 and he was exonerated. In the Epilogue, Mahmood’s son Omar was found dead on a beach in Caithness, Scotland. He’d said in an interview: ‘Until I was eight, I was told my father had died at sea. Then one day the Salvation...

Always feels a privilege to award Picks of the Week, but it is never easy to pick just one thing. However, Poem of the Week is These Hands by Ewan. There is something very profound about our hands and Ewan’s poem captures it beautifully. So much so that I am using it as our Inspiration Point this week. You can read the poem here: https://www.abctales.com/story/ewan/these-hands Story of the Week is Sean McNulty’s A Mortal Drag. I am a huge fan of...

When am I going to get my Ukrainian lodger? I registered my interest on Homes for Ukraine some time ago. I have spent hours sorting out my spare room. In fact I shall be moving into my spare room and my lodger shall be getting my current bedroom. Both rooms have their pros and cons. My back bedroom has been my office since my younger daughter was awarded her degree and moved abroad to work and travel. It has more shelving. The front room, the...

Choices, choices. Always difficult, I've found it particularly hard this week. It's not you, it's me. Story of the Week I was tossing up between quite a few this week: I liked Celticman's Uggly Puggly III which is part of the the start of something that could be brilliant, but then it's got Jack's handle attached to it, so that's a given, after all. Go here if you need to. I'm also enjoying Jane Hyphen's Legend of the Pah , you should check it...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0b64mbt/house-of-maxwell-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0b64n6s/house-of-maxwell-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0b64nww/house-of-maxwell-series-1-episode-3 Who are you? What are you? Robert Maxwell. 'All life is a choice. And if you want to succeed, you’ve got to commit yourself. Be single-minded. Duty is more important than love. That’s what I was...

No difficulty at all in choosing our Story of the Week this time - an episode of jeand's brave and absorbing account of her experiences of what started out as Bell's Palsy and has now taken an even more complicated turn. Please do read this, and the other parts of Jean's story. I know everyone on the site will want to send her all the very best: Janus Look 4 | ABCtales Poem of the Week goes to smokejack's 'Undertow'. It's a swirling, hypnotic...

The story so far: Got up with the intention of attending a Body Balance class at the Leisure Centre. Arrived and found no parking spaces and vast numbers of cars arriving and disgorging children. (Many children.) Undaunted, I finally found a parking space and went in to join the class, around five minutes late. Turns out it's a 'bring your own yoga mat' class. I have no yoga mat. Undaunted, I find a space and start to take part. The reaching and...

Colson Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel about a magical underground railroad that took slaves from the South not to safety, but not to slavery either. Harlem Shuffle has no such tropes. Ray Carney is trying to get by selling furniture on 125 th Street. 1959, America is on the up and up. Not that you’d know if you were a black man. He needs to walk the line of being crooked enough to be straight. Everyone is on the take from the cop...

Roddy Doyle makes you smile. You just need to think of that line from The Commitments , ‘We are the black men of…’ whatever it was. I’m never very good at remembering. He wrote about the housing crisis in Dublin. Rosie ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p09lk76z/rosie ). How letting the market sort things out is darkest doublethink, whilst helping take a hammer to poor people’s lives. What I’m building up to saying is aye, Roddy Doyle, but...

As per usual, the stream of good material flows ever on. It cheers me up no end to know that – every day – there is something to read that is brilliant, beguiling, or brave,. Sometimes a piece is all three. Story of the W eek was a tough choice again this week. Rosalie Kempthorne produced several of her off-kilter, disturbing, yet believable pieces. Part one of the first of them is here Jack O’ Donnell (Celticman’s) fishermen’s tale ‘The Ten...