Apologies for the late arrival of this - and big congratulations to airyfairy for 'My Mother and I Agree On Something' and Stephen Thom for 'String' - both brilliant pieces in their own very different ways. Do read if you haven't already. https://www.abctales.com/story/airyfairy/my-mother-and-i-agree-something https://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/string Here's the Inspiration Point: https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip .. and don...

I wrote this a few years ago and I thought it would be topical right now. I'm sure there's a flaw in my logic but I can't just....

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/unreported-world/on-demand/65524-002 Just when you thought you’d seen enough of writer, producer and documentary maker Louis Theroux his brother Marcel pops up in Russia in a programme about Putin’s Family Values. There are two narratives here, one which we in the West will no doubt be familiar with. Tatanya is the Russian matriarch who opens her heart and opens her home. She has adopted 48 children and is...

It’s funny the little things that can make your day special. Small and seemingly inconsequential to others but can be a major uplift to the recipient…The little finds that make you smile…the unexpected helping hand extended just when you need it…the simple thank you…the welcome from a neighbor…found money when you forgot you put it there… The world can seem harsh and functional and day to day grinding when you are in the middle of your working...

This week from Philip Sidney: Lots of great reads this week but the two pieces that captured my attention were: 1. A chapter from scriptwriterm, a lovely piece of armchair travel. https://www.abctales.com/story/scriptwriterm/between-lines-chapter-10 2. The poetry pick is a moving piece about a cat - and so much more. Well done YaseminB! https://www.abctales.com/story/yaseminb/yumak-and-arisha Spring has sprung! And that's this week's inspiration...

Lots of great reads this week but the two pieces that captured my attention were: 1. A chapter from scriptwriterm, a lovely piece of armchair travel. https://www.abctales.com/story/scriptwriterm/between-lines-chapter-10 2. The poetry pick is a moving piece about a cat - and so much more. Well done YaseminB! https://www.abctales.com/story/yaseminb/yumak-and-arisha Spring has sprung! And that's this week's inspiration point - SPRING (at last :))...

I recently read Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project , which I also reviewed. He uses much the same framework in his debut novel The Disappearance of Adele Bedeau . Here he claims the book’s author is not himself but Raymond Brunet and he is simply translating it, much the same as he claimed the leading authorial voice in His Bloody Project was not Graeme Macrae but the triple murderer, his Scottish ancestor, Roderick Macrae. I’m usually...

His Bloody Project was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016. Fiction often dresses up as fact. In the preface Burnet cites Gaelic Ossian poetry as a fake widely lauded for being factual, but the best fiction always does seem factual, or else it’s not worth reading. As a murder there’s no mystery. In the small crofting community of Culuie, with around 55 residents, seventeen-year-old Roderick Macrae took a croman and flaughter, a kind of pick...

I read The Power and the Glory years ago. But there’s no glory in forgetting the books I read faster than the faces I meet. If pushed I might have known it was set in Mexico and I would have remembered the main character was a whisky priest, but not that he was the narrator. What stuck was a scene in which the whisky priest comes to a small village and one of the peons that come to meet him goes back to his family and friends and urges them to...