Letting Go A really hard thing as a human and as a teacher, for me personally, is “letting go”. I am finding more and more that social media is absolutely horrible at helping me with this problem. A WatsApp group with my matric learners, for example, and when the year ends, they leave the group. It guts me. It really does. But, the time is done, the short interaction I had with them is over and, as a very different generation, they are not ones...

Well, in my efforts to post more blogs once more in 2019 ... I can cover a variety of topics... so why not post my morning musing writings... Here goes ... Lord? How do I get that joy, the joy of being with YOU to explode from me? IT ALREADY DOES MY ANGEL – IT ALREADY DOES – YOU COULDN’T FAKE TEETH PHOTO SMILE IF YOU TRIED ;) Heh heh, thanks Lord, wish I could come to terms with it all inside of me too… how does a lighthouse realise and know its...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000264s/the-commune Nudity, whoopty whoo. This film was alright. It was kinda you get what you deserve. It began with a man and women, Erik and Anna moving into a big house in the 1970s, the end of the hippy era, with their adolescent daughter, Freja. It’s her idea to set up a commune in Copenhagen. He’s more pragmatic. The house is too expensive, his childhood home, but they can’t even afford to heat it,...

A carved wooden statue of Merlin in Carmarthen town centre. He’s a mysterious Celtic shaman who constantly popped up in British culture and folklore between the 5th and 15th centuries. There were reports of him in various guises up and down the west coast from Cornwall to Wales to Cumbria to Scotland. Strongest evidence suggests he originated from Carmarthenshire in Wales in the 5th century, where he was probably driven insane by war. Today, we...

I loved this book and read it in one breathy go, thankful for the nourishment. If you’re a scribbler like me that tries to pour himself into himself, writes something down and always comes up with less than a quart-measure, and that’s on a good day, read on. I loved this book so much I’m going to start standing beside the Jehovah’s at the bridge in the Shopping Centre in Clydebank and handing it out to would-be-writers like me and asking them to...

So, is it only because I have been in contact with the literature on “Existential Vacuums” that I am going through this? If I had no idea what this “Existential Vacuum” was, would I still have experienced it/be experiencing it? The kuck thing about being a human with one life and one perspective, is that I will actually never have any definite answer to my question, because I can’t live two lives at once, and I can’t see two perspectives when I...

ABC writers have approached the New Year with vigour, and there has been some truly exceptional writing on the site this week. After much thought, Story of the Week goes to 'Risky Business' by Tipp Hex. There's wonderful description, of people, events and scenery, and it poses thoughtful questions which really engage the reader: https://www.abctales.com/story/tipp-hex/risky-business Poem of the Week goes to Jane Hyphen for 'Somebody Sang And I...

John Nandy wrote for many years on ABCTales as well-wisher, and remains a much loved member of our community. His final collection, published posthumously, is available now on Amazon and his family have asked me if I could help publicise it which I do with great pleasure. You can read reviews by two lovely members below. Here's the link if you'd like to buy a copy - as you will see, we can all thoroughly recommend it!: https://www.amazon.co.uk/...

Golden Friendship, Jim McLaren and ‘Grab a Granny’. I know that all sounds a bit of a mouthful, but I’ll try and explain it to you. Golden Friendship is a club run in the 543 Club. What type of club? Jim McLaren explained it to me a long while ago. And I’m not really sure he knew himself. Like most folk, I said, ‘Aye, Jim,’ while waiting for it to fall on its arse. His mum said much the same thing today. That first day of the Golden Friendship...

Tara Westover’s Educated has a tag-line from Barack Obama on the cover, ‘a remarkable memoir’ and in terms of sales I doubt there was a bigger selling book in 2018. I’m a voracious reader but it’s been a long time since a book kept me up to the wee small hours. I’d nibbled at Educated online, reading the first few pages, before getting the paperback and devouring almost 400 pages in one large gulp. It’s the kind of book I like, because it’s...