https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00039vv/next-big-thing-series-1-7-my-loneliness-is-killing-me This short film won a Scottish BAFTA, which pleased me because I’d met the writer, Michael Richardson, a few times on a writing course I got turfed out of for not being able to write. Fair enough. I often go off in tangents that have no relevance. It’s not Dennis Nilsen, killing for company, and blocking the drains with body parts, or, bottle...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0003w40/the-murder-of-jill-dando There seems to be a plethora of anniversaries and murder reconstructions on all of the main channels. We’ve had the Bulger, The Yorkshire Ripper and Jack the Ripper recently and before that Fred and Rose West. The list goes on. Partly, I’d guess to the world-wide success of The Making of a Murderer. BBC couldn’t let the twentieth anniversary, 26 th April 1999, of one of its...

My son told me the other day about someone getting in trouble with a knife in the playground. I was worried, but thought, well, the school will be on it, it won't happen again. Then he explained he'd only mentioned it because it was someone he knew, who had been threatend and there was a knife incident of some kind every week. At his previous school the main topics of conversation were suicide or porn, and the children at this new school are...

I don’t read a lot of young adult or children’s fiction, but for any budding writers the Costa Book of the Year 2015 is pretty much perfect. The narrator of the story, Faith Sunderlay, is at that in-between age where she’s considered neither girl nor women, on the cusp of making her Confirmation. Her father Reverend Erasmus Sunderlay is, as you’d expect with a name like that next to God, in the eyes of his family and Victorian society. Faith’s...

Celtic win 2—1 and go thirteen points clear in the Scottish Premier League with seven games remaining. Should be eight-in-a-row for the Scottish Champions. Perhaps for the first time ever Sky coverage at half-time wasn’t a beautifully worked first time pass from Calumn McGregor to Odsonnne Edouard and the goal that separated the Old Firm. The French striker still had a lot to do, with the two Ranger’s centre-halves between him and the goal, but...

So the right honourable prime minister for the ‘couldn’t organize a pizz-up in a brewery’ party had her Brexit deal rejected for the 3 rd time… but undeterred, will probably bring it back for the 4 th time next week. And then the left honourable leader of the ‘shadow of its former self’ party declared that it was a shambolic deal and a shambolic government and a shambolic prime minister and as soon as he could remember what his party’s latest...

This last week of March has been a colourful one - thanks to a great inspiration point. It's been like sifting though a tin of chocolates to choose two delectable pieces - but - our poem of the week is a gorgeous evocation of the season from Rhiannon: https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/wild-daffodils-field-and-meadow Our story of the week is an irreverent and humorous piece from Mikesize1: https://www.abctales.com/story/mikesize1/christ-...

This one is personal for a few of us on ABCTales. Julia (Overthetop1) was one of our much loved users as is her mother Coral (seashore). Two of our most talented poets very kindly agreed to provide reviews which you can read below, and then I've copied Cerasus Poetry's post which contains a link to buy the book. I've read it. You should too. It's extraordinary: Julia MacPherson’s Waiting For Another Velvet Morning by Maggy Van Eijk (maggyvaneijk...

A record came on, maybe around 4.00am: ‘Some Velvet Morning’, the singer intoned. We looked at each other, listened. It had captured our mood so accurately. After it ended, we all said we would not forget this night. It was one of those sunlit, spider-web moments that cannot be swept away.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0003m0l/the-yorkshire-ripper-files-a-very-british-crime-story-series-1-episode-3 Episode 1, Chapeltown. We all know what happened to Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed in the late seventies the Yorkshire Ripper, he was arrested in January 1981 and sent to Broadmoor the high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire, for thirteen murders and seven other attacks on women. Although we sometimes hear in the press of him...