A touch of light and dark in our poem and story of the week this week. Thanks to catherine poarch for a glittering poem: https://www.abctales.com/story/catherine-poarch/only-one-song Also to Terrence Oblong for a brilliant piece of satire: https://www.abctales.com/story/terrence-oblong/civil-war The media circus comes to town again in the run-up to the June elections - so our inspiration point for this week is: circus. https://www.abctales.com/...

A lifetime of London. It must be like having a pound in your pocket and only finding fifty pence of it worth spending. I'm an ex-Londoner. Good. Iain Sinclair's anthology often strikes gold. He knows a number of older people who have bygone memories of 70s London and before. Two old Jews, members of my own lost tribe, Emanuel Litivinoff and Josef Rudolf make the spirit of the old East End walk. I also like some of the fantasy writings, the...

Ann Cleeves has written a whole stack of books. This is her 31 st . Sunday Times Bestselling author, and an imprint on the cover of the book showing some actor’s face, Douglas Fenshall, with the tag now a major BBC drama. She is everything I am not, an established author whom I’ve never heard of until West Dunbartonshire Libraries made her novel Cold Earth novel of the week. Here’s where I segue away and start talking about myself like those...

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 14 Apr 2017 There's been some wonderful stuff on the site this week. A number of our writers have posted thought provoking, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, pieces about the terrible conflicts in our world. Lille Dante and Ewan's pieces particularly stuck in my mind, but as Poem of the Week I've gone for Philip Sidney's 'Night Flying in North Wales: https://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/night-flying-north-wales...

There's been some wonderful stuff on the site this week. A number of our writers have posted thought provoking, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, pieces about the terrible conflicts in our world. Lille Dante and Ewan's pieces particularly stuck in my mind, but as Poem of the Week I've gone for Philip Sidney's 'Night Flying in North Wales: https://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/night-flying-north-wales The way this connects 'Us' and 'Them' is...

I probably shouldn't say this, but there are things about Easter that irritate me. I think it's a subject that warrants a little discussion, so bear with me. Just as an aside, that phrase 'bear with me' always makes me think of The Perishers in the Daily Mirror from years ago, where one of the characters had a bear called Gladly. It was called this because it had cross-eyes, from the hymn, 'Gladly , my cross I'd bear'. Seemed an appropriate...

I've been there, I won a place to a selective school when I was eleven. I think the system's crap. Does anyone believe that the youngsters labelled less academically able at eleven will get the same money spent on them as grammar school students? The argument for secondary modern schools was that these were for young people who would leave school as soon as they were legally allowed. Some would then learn a trade and the employer would give them...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/09/freak-show-television-has-replaced-bread-and-circuses I know I don’t do enough reading or enough writing. Unless Celtic are playing on a Sunday, which increasingly they are, I do nothing much but read the Observer from cover to magazine. Kevin McKenna is the kind of specialist they consult about all things Scottish. Like me he’s a Celtic man. Here he is mimicking me, I’ve been saying these...

I am very pleased to be able to tell you that the lovely Noo is going to be taking over Poetry Montly, starting at the beginning of May. We have such a brilliant team of people who offer their precious time to keep ABCTales a vibrant and supportive community and I am so grateful to all of them - thank you!

'What are the risks of individuality in a determinedly individualistic, yet racially uniform and socially static community?' Good question. Could be me talking about Exmouth, East Devon today. Could be Elena Ferrante talking about the working-class Naples of her dual heroines Lila and Elena. It's Toni Morrison, writing in 2005. She is writing a new foreword to her second novel Sula. It was first published in 1973. At the time she was a single...