Two legends set the scene for this week's picks. Story of the week is a modern take on a classic tale. The Grandmother, from Penelope Creighton is beautifully executed and perfect reading on a dark cold night. https://www.abctales.com/story/penelopecreighton/grandmother Poem of the week elevates the humble bagel to its rightful status. Alfie Shoyger's ode to the mythic snack will make you smile. https://www.abctales.com/story/alfie-shoyger/bagel...

Poems are small on the page, but can swell to fill the mind.

It’s less than twenty-four hours since I watched one of the best Heavyweight contests in a long time. The Bronze Bomber v The Gypsy King, come on, it sounds like it’s straight out of a feature film! The Bronze Bomber is a black American from Alabama whose real name is Deontay Wilder. He won the bronze medal at the 2008 Olympics as an amateur. He’s now 6ft 7inches, unbeaten in 40 fights and won most of them by knocking his opponents senseless. He...

Now available on Amazon too. (& it has charted after 24hrs since going 'Live') https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JCTPM34?pf_rd_p=1581d9f4-062f-453c-... I plan to roll this out quietly, slow burn it through December and do a social media 'Blitz' in January 2019. In some ways, TROATT its a bit of a gamble; if you look through my other drafts (The Andaman affair, & its early incarnation of a 009 adventure - 'Ghost of a chance' on my page...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007clvf/louis-theroux-the-most-hated-family-in-america https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0107zhy/louis-theroux-americas-most-hated-family-in-crisis These are snapshots of white America in 2006 and 2010 and the evangelical Phelp’s family from Topeka, Kansas, who preached a creed of hate and intolerance and labelled it Christianity. Who wrapped their family in the nation’s flag and the First Amendment of...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?filter=programmes&q=End%20Of%20Days&suggid=urn%3Abbc%3Aprogrammes%3Ap06qc33m I asked my girlfriend if she’d heard of Waco. No, she hadn’t. That shocked me a bit. But I’m the reader that sometimes writes stuff in the family, nobody ever reads. And, of course, I’d heard of David Koresh, but I didn’t know that wasn’t his real name, he’d picked it for the biblical resonance in the same way Shirley Crabtree called...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bs2v31/a-great-british-injustice-the-maguire-story?suggid=b0bs2v31 Fake news. Well, here’s a fake conviction that of the Maguire Seven: Anne Maguire, her husband Patrick, her teenage sons Vincent and Patrick, her brother Sean Smyth, her brother-in-law Guiseppe Conlon and a family friend, Patrick O’Neil. Prime minister Tony Blair was quoted on television and news media, on 10 th February 2005, to apologise...

Debut screenwriter and director Daniel Kokotajalo weaves together apostasy in Kingdom Hall, and strands of growing sexuality and defiance in a North of England family setting. Middle-aged, Ivanna (Siobhan Finneran) has two teenage daughters and holds on to Jehovah Church doctrine like a nursing mother. The gold standard here is Jeanette Winterton’s autobiographical 1985 novel, adapted as a 1990 BBC serial, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The...

Two pieces on the theme of memory caught my eye this week. Story of the Week is jolono's 'Mr Russ'. It's a deceptively simple tale of a family and their elderly neighbour sharing food, friendship and a few games of cards, but the characters and the warmth of the emotions reach out and envelop the reader. I couldn't stop thinking about it once I'd read it: https://www.abctales.com/story/jolono/mr-russ Poem of the Week goes to agnosticnun's '...

Lots to choose from this week and, naturally many had a Remembrance Sunday connection. However, amongst the prose, I was struck by Noo's nihilistic story about, well, I'll leave you to decide what this well-crafted oddity, Passive Voice, is about. Poem of the week does have a Remembrance Sunday theme, this wonderful poem Mesopotamia by Philip Sidney is about a lesser known campaign and all the more powerful for it. The Inspiration Point is here...