Miriam Margolyes has done England, she’s done Trump’s United States and now she’s been sent on another two month road trip to see how Australia works (or doesn’t). Honeyed days indeed for an 82-year-old ‘fat, Jewish, lesbian’ (her words). Same old faces, popping up everywhere. I like the idea of Miriam Margolyes being unshakeable and having shock value, but this just seems like more jobs for the boys, although of course she’s not and it’s some...

One day when I was really feeling down about something, my mom taught me how to crochet the pattern for her blankets. I was young and had so much going on beyond home that although at the time I did learn how- I only made small attempts to make one of my own, never having more than a row or two for my attempts. While my mom was alive and could have helped me, I never found the time to start another one and after she was gone, I couldn’t remember...

I picked up this book and put it down a few times. I doubt if I’d have read it, but for one thing—it was Bob’s book. He carried it around like a lucky rabbit paw in his rucksack (not so lucky for the rabbit). Mostly in the first 150 pages of the book, around the middle of the book, Bob scribbled messages to himself in biro. He underlined words like Urbie and wrote things like ‘Visible From Space So We r Told’. Adding a tick mark to quote from...

It's been a happily productive week on the site annd we're fortunate to have a number of new writers joining us - welcome one and all! I don't know about you, but I'm yearning for pastures new. The evocative poem from Coolhermit takes us on some armmchair travel that may satisfy that itch - with a trip back in time and 'in Nepal' - it's our poem of the week: https://www.abctales.com/story/coolhermit/nepal-june-1971 Our story of the week also...

Graeme Armstrong (2020) The Young Team Gore Vidal is attributed with the quote, ‘Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little’. Graeme Armstrong is not a friend of mine. But the title of his book, The Young Team needs no detailed sociological explanation. I don’t need to go searching for definitions in The Urban Dictionary . I’m proud to be working class, less proud to have a chib mark on my face and knocked guys out and been a baw hair away...

‘Witches Sail in Eggshells’ is a quote from Meg, a character in a story of the same name, but also a playful aside from Keiza, the bewitcher of the unnamed protagonist. It bookends a collection of seventeen short stories of around 150 pages. I think the first story in the collection, ‘Hagstone,’ is the best short-story in the collection, and the last, ‘Witches Sail in Eggshells’, next best—you may think differently. Short-stories bewitch in...

Mrs America, BBC 2, BBC iPlayer, written by Dahvi Waller and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08ggl84/mrs-america-series-1-1-phyllis https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p08gglyp/mrs-america-series-1-2-gloria It’s 1971, American troops are still fighting in Vietnam. Richard Nixon is President and is engaged in ongoing peace talks with his USSR counterpart, President Brezhnev. Phyllis Schlafly (Cate...

Storyville, Welcome to Chechnya: The Gay Purge, BBC 4, BBC iPlayer, director David France. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000kjnt/storyville-welcome-to-chechnya-the-gay-purge Here we have Claud Cockburn’s maxim as a rule of thumb, ‘Never believe anything until it has been officially denied’. Director David France’s documentary shows clearly that gay lives don’t matter in Chechnya, or in Russia, generally. Imagine George Michael had went...

I've got too much time on my hands –but that’s not a complaint exactly, it’s a cry for organization. I am still home and staying safe waiting for the cases to decline again and I decided to use this time as a gift and give my writing a daily focus, which while I was working full time was never a possibility. So I’ve restarted several stories I’d left unfinished- but somehow I’ve started them all at the same time. That wasn’t the plan; it just...