The night air is chilled but the climb up the ladder is thrilling…as I lift the skylight’s heavy cover and push it carefully off the opening… I feel the freedom in the first breath of night air as I lift myself up onto the edge...and out onto the roof top...I am immediately thrust into a magical place as I stare into the deep, quiet darkness filled with starlight above and street lights below. It is a world beyond the normal, a world where...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bvbf5n/care I like Jimmy McGovern’s dramas. Apart from Brookside, I’ve probably seen most of them. Care, well, it’s in the title. As a dramatist he’s got to make us care about single mum Jenny (Sheridan Smith) her elderly mum Mary (Alison Steadman) and the distant sister Claire (Sinead Keenan). And he begins with a car crash. Mary crashes the car with two kids in the back. Cue drama as we find out that the...

A Review, by Simon Whitworth AKA Fatboy_74, of Ewan (Lawrie)'s Cerasus Poetry published collection "Last Night I Met John Adcock"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bt8x6z/barbra-streisand-becoming-an-icon-19421984?suggid=b0bt8x6z Barbra Streisand is a bit like the Rorschach-ink-blot test. Ugly or beautiful? Well, my sister Jo, used to get told she looked like Barbra Streisand. In other words, she had a big hooter. This was the consolation prize you didn’t want to win. Streisand redefined what it meant to be beautiful. If you listen to her feminist fan Camille Paglia...

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...