5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,419.92 ) Week - 39 The Dying Breed! ------------- What is Compassion..? --------------------------------- My wife suffers the effects of arthritis. She receives a drug infusion at a nearby clinic every few weeks. In her most recent treatment this past week, she had an unusual encounter which she then related to me. A somewhat elderly woman had also been there for a similar reason...

‘My name is Aidan and I am an addict.’ So what, you might say. You probably know the trajectory that follows. You’ve got Damian Barr, who grew up near Ravenscraig steelworks, a solid working-class town. Him being gay wasn’t his fault—or even a fault—but being a fucking Tory, Maggie & Me , was just a step too far. Deborah Orr, Motherwell: A Girlhood , which just about sums it up. You’ve got Kerry Hudson’s whimsical, Tony Hogan Bought Me an...

5K - 52 Weeks - 20 Penny Stocks One Winner!! Current Status ( -$3,462.34 ) Week - 37/38 The Yin and Yang of Ageing! ------------- The Circle of life giveth, and sometimes taketh away.. --------------------------------- I work for a company which supplies fire alarm equipment to large commercial and healthcare institutions. Been in the business for something like 40, maybe 45 years. I’ve seen them come and I’ve seen them go, so to speak! On...

I find reading Acknowledgements instructive. Writing is a singular process, but a team game. When you write, or try to write, you look at books differently. You look at the cover and artwork [tick]. You look at the publisher: Faber [tick]. Fiona Scarlett has got the backing of the one of the major league publishers for her debut novel. You look at the blurbs on the back. What famous writers have been hooked in to add for added publicity,...

Samuel Shem (1978) The House of God. You might have read, Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor , or Jed Mercurio’s Bodies (before he became a multimillionaire screenwriter). You know what to expect an insider account of naïve young men and women moving outside the world of books and into a cult into which they will work day and night, with little sleep and little idea what they are doing, while wearing a white coat...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00116dq/the-exorcist I was around ten, big for my age, but not big enough to sneak into the La Scala and watch The Exorcist . The media warned us—don’t go. Rather than see it, there was talk of church boycotts and a spate of suicides. And those that did see it fainted, spewed up, or went insane. But my sister was made of stronger stuff. Jo even smoked and drank vodka. She wasn’t eighteen, but there was a...

Halloween is here with ghosts and goblins and squeals of freight. Every child’s imagination soars as they put on a costume and become their imagined fantasy. It is fun and freeing and for the very young, the best holiday of the year. Scary movies or humorous, spine tingling, TV shows light up the screens of many homes. Cauldron bowls are filled to brimming with candy treats and homes are decorated to fright or delight depending on the decorator'...

This week's Inspiration Point of 'Night' has produced some marvellous work, and both our Picks this week are responses to the IP. Story of the Week is rosaliekempthorne's sensuous, chilling 'Night Hag'. The real meets the Other in a delicate blend of sensations. It's perfect reading for this particular time of year: Night Hag | ABCtales Poem of the Week goes to onemorething's 'Wintered Thin', the last of her four stunning 'dark poems' for...

Kate Summerscale is the author of the bestselling book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher , which was turned into a telly series. I haven’t read the book or seen the series. But after reading The Haunting of Alma Fielding , I’ll certainly need to add her work to my (growing) reading list. The beginning, middle and end—part 1, the ghost hunter, part 2, the ghost and part 3, the ghost—brings the reader from the pre-second-world-war offices of the...

Printed on a postcard, My Wife and Mother-in-Law, and distributed as a novelty by an unknown French artist (1888). They are both in the picture; find them? (p254-5). An old woman with a hooked nose, and her chin tucked into her fur coat is in one picture. The elegant young woman in the other. Initially, I couldn’t see the old woman, just the young. I tried rotating it. Blocking out parts of the picture and concentrating on where her long chin...