Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 09 Jun 2017 It's been wonderful to see so many new writers and such a range of writing this week. I've chosen pieces that take an unusual perspective on the natural world. Markle's beautifully described, 'The Gardens', takes us somewhere slightly unsettling, I dare you to take the garden walk: https://www.abctales.com/story/markle/gardens Rosa Cruz's, 'Today birdsong is turned up loud', is full of verve, a gift to...

It's been wonderful to see so many new writers and such a range of writing this week. I've chosen pieces that take an unusual perspective on the natural world. Markle's beautifully described, 'The Gardens', takes us somewhere slightly unsettling, I dare you to take the garden walk: https://www.abctales.com/story/markle/gardens Rosa Cruz's, 'Today birdsong is turned up loud', is full of verve, a gift to the senses, so yours a favour and take this...

I’d like Alan Johnson to be Prime Minster. That seems outlandish as Jeremy Corbyn, but Johnson is not such a Daily- Hate- Mail figure. But he was Home Secretary under the Labour Government 2009-10, a position our current Prime Minster Teresa May held before becoming Tory leader. I guess at the end of polling today she’ll remain Prime Minister. I read an interview with Paul O’Grady on Sunday in which he wished the heads of David Cameron, and his...

I usually vote SNP, but will vote Labour. The first-past-the-post system means that my vote is meaningless, but if everybody thought the same thing the Tory party would win by a landslide. Teresa May obviously thought that way. Her Damascene moment came while walking the dales. It had nothing to do with local government elections, where historically the party in government gets trashed, but the Conservative Party gained seats, even in places...

Writing is the easy part. That’s what I tell folk. That’s when I learn what I think. And others think about me. Reading is the engine of writing. I’ve had a long love affair with books, with bouts of promiscuity. As I get older I find time not reading is time wasted. Selling yourself, well, that’s the hard part. Not many folk know about Scottish Book Trust. It’s a national charity. Until I started writing a few years ago I hadn’t heard of it...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08tj1kx/bill-cosby-fall-of-an-american-icon Today, 5 th June 2017, Bill Cosby faces four charges of first-degree aggravated sexual assault against Andrea Constand. A possible ten-year prison sentence hangs in the balance. He has pled not guilty. In many ways this is the reverse of the OJ Simpson trial. When Constand made the allegations against Cosby that he had drugged and sexually assaulted her in summer...

Picks for the month of May very kindly chosen by Sean McNulty: Story: The Green and White Dress by rosaliekempthorne https://www.abctales.com/ story/rosaliekempthorne/green- and-white-dress The Green and White Dress is a wonderful piece of writing. It feels like a timeless, classic satire – the characters and the setting could exist at any time in history. It feels so real, yet plays out like images twinkling in some fantastic magic lantern...

Horrible news again. I often feel that terrorists hold lefty-liberals like myself in even worse contempt than the hard right. When we say 'have what religion or non-belief you like and we don't care who owns the land provided we all have food and water and have whatever views you like provide you stick to words only' I am sure we are seen as being human toilet paper because they don't understand us. My thoughts are with the relatives of the 10...

The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante’s fourth and final novel, is largely set in a working-class district of Naples. The narrator in each novel has been Elena Grecco, born the reader is told in August 1944 and this narrative takes us up to 2005 and almost the present day, when she’s an old woman in her late sixties, sitting on her balcony, looking over the Po, a view of Vesuvius and the semicircle of Naples. She is content, a writer, in...

What a lot of great pieces this week - it's been very hard to choose just two! Big congratulations to Lille Dante for his poem ' my spectre hits the shopping mall of time' which makes me laugh each time I read it, and to love_writing for 'My Mother and I aren't Talking and Other Tales' - a finely drawn picture of a disordered childhood. If you haven't read them yet, please do! https://www.abctales.com/story/lille-dante/my-spectre-haunts-shopping...