Two great pieces this week. Poem of the Week goes to Philip Sidney for the pitch-perfect Daguerreotype, and Story of the Week to proudwing for Witnesses - his first piece (of many I hope!) on the site. Congratulations to both: http://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/daguerreotype http://www.abctales.com/story/proudwing/witnesses Good luck with this week's Inspiration Point: http://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip .. and finally don't...

hi late at night, yes it is late. but i was thinking i start my blog on here. i have been away for a while not able to write for a few months. sad events took a hold of my family. my brother passaway in may and due to the time people have to wait until you can say goodbye to a person, we did not have that until June. so no poem from me or are there song lyrics i write never very sure on that point. this a wonderfully site, we all come here to...

I can hear my partner, Mary, yakking on the phone downstairs, talking to her Auntie Mary about another Auntie- Eleanor who is dying. ‘She did have a bit of fear…’ she’s talking about her Granny, not her Auntie Eleanor, but the story is familiar, the same one. The Big C. ‘Apparently one in three people get cancer,’ Philip Wright, the thirteen-year old narrator tells the reader. That’s a 50/50 chance. That’s a joke. Jokes don’t have to be funny,...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the passage of time this week or so. Since I last put pen to paper, or rather hand to keyboard, so much has happened in a short space of time; where to start? The Monday after my charity sponsored walk seems good, being the beginning of the end (of term and one big part of my life). Still sore of foot and heavy of head I made my way with my daughter to watch her son’s assembly about saving the planet and the...

A good week for me. I’ve moved up the alphabet from arsehole to author. There was brouhaha over the other side of the Atlantic over plagiarism. You may not have noticed, but I’m attuned to these social markers. Donald Trump’s second or third wife (who is doing the counting and who really cares) in a speech supporting her husband’s suitability to lead not just the Republican party, but the American nation as President, began her speech with...

I share the same page as Jeremy Corbyn. We supported this crowdfunded book published by Unbound and I’d guess Corbyn shares many of my interests in equality and social justice. Left Field as the name suggests is about the You and non-You as a house master described the apparent differences between houses at Canford school in Dorset, to a pubescent Wilson, at the fag end of the not-so-swinging fifties. David Wilson or Commie Wilson as he was...

The London Competition! 2 Books to be won. The Gentle Authors London Album and my own not quite so great East End Butcher Boy! Just £2 an entry ( See home page). Anything about London is welcome. Prose or Poetry it makes no difference. I want to know what you think about London, How you feel about London ( Celticman, I already know what you think, but have a go anyway!). I want to hear stories and poems about London. Sights, smells, sounds.....

I was a bit miffed reading The Observer , ‘IN FOCUS’, that no one had asked me to write about David Cameron’s legacy. I can only guess that’s because a blank page wouldn’t appeal to the reader. They would think it was some kind of trick – like global warming on a miserable and wet Scottish Sunday. I listened to Jeremy Corbyn stand up (OK you can’t hear someone standing up on the radio)in the House of Commons (with very few commoners in the House...

Since language appears to be a key weapon in the battle that clouds the soul of the UK, would it be worth asking the moral majority what they define as the "elite"? We might find there are more elites than anyone thought. The same with "ordinary". Who are these ordinary folk? It seems to me it might be a little too easy to point the finger at a nebulous term and let slip the dogs of war.