The day after tomorrow it will be 2026. It seems to have crept up unannounced tapping you on the shoulder and whispering '.. I'm here'. The year has been one of turmoil, death and uncertainty. And it may well continue for sometime to come, but there is always, always art. As Toni Morrison once said, 'This is precisely when artists go to work'. Whether its writing, music, dance, painting or sculpting, each of us in our creative field has a...

I'm seeking fans of this novel. I'd like to know what you think of its prose, plot, or even the ending. If you live near, or have visited, the locations mentioned in the novel, I'd love to know your thoughts on the geography and setting of the novel. Please comment (random thoughts welcome). - J.

I just closed the door when mama bolted out of the house and damn near slammed me against my car with the impact of her hug. This 5’4” woman, 100 lbs soaking wet, damn near bowled me over. She wrapped her arms around my neck and tried to hoist herself up and wrap her legs around my waist to complete a mama bear hug but she recently had knee surgery so that was impossible. Just clung to my neck. I had to lift her up lest she choke me. Lifted her...

So I have been using Mederma scar gel and it won’t make the scars go away. Nothing will make them go away. Nothing. Will. Make. Them. Go. Away. But they have gradually changed from trenches to smooth maplines. Still they will never go away. The blast and the chemicals of it, the blast and the heat of it, the blast and the burning from it, the blast and the scarring because of it will never go away. Will never go away. They will stay. And now...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-quiet-girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_Girl The Quiet Girl is a quiet film with a quiet girl like a spider at the centre of a web of things that happen over which she has little or no control. Summer 1981. Nine-year-old Cáit (Catherine Clinchis) lives with her wastrel dad, a pregnant-again-mum and a brood on other brothers and sisters on a rundown Irish farm. Cáit’s belonging are packed up and...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/anais-in-love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana%C3%AFs_in_Love Anaïs in Love is to Paris, what Frances Ha is to New York. Annais (Anaïs Demoustier) is the eternal student, with a half-finished doctorate whose subject matter of French passion in the distant past puts herself at the centre of her non-studying universe. Each moment, each day, each missed deadline, uncovers new material waiting for her. Her mum’s...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05569p9/good-vibrations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Hooley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Vibrations_(film) I was between books and wondering what shite to watch. I was going to say on the telly, but that’s as odd as admitting to owning a Singers Sewing Machine. Films and documentaries. Stuff that makes you think without really having to think. Good Vibrations was a bit of both and simply...

Christmas! Wonder of Wonders & Miracle of Miracles God bless us all, each one!

The Big Nowhere comes at the end of James Ellroy’s take on 1950s Los Angeles. Angels in The City of Angels are in short supply. Every crummy cop is on the take and it works all the way up the ladder to the city bosses and studio heads such as Howard Hughes. In walkies and talkies only money matters. Hughes can fill his studios with starlets and have apartment’s at ready to be filled with the fifteen-year-old farm girls with big knockers that he...

Does God have a plan for our lives? What about times of disaster? If there is a God and he has a perfect plan for our lives, why do things sometimes go horribly wrong? God is still there pulling the threads together into what will eventually be a beautiful pattern, even though everything is entangled and it may seem like a complete mess. God looked after Elijah during a famine. Elijah declared to King Ahab that there would be no rain for 3 years...