God always gets the best lines such as ‘before you were I am,’ that’s why he’s God. If you don’t do God, try some Sylvia Plath, ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart, I am, I am, I am.’ I’d never heard of Maggie O’Farrell, didn’t know she existed until her name appeared on the front cover, plugging another book by a Scottish author, Damian Barr. I hadn’t heard of Barr either and for some reason I thought O’Farrell was...

I'm leaning against the playground wall with an air of studied indifference and boredom. A number of my friends are standing with me affecting the same pose. We are watching the antics of the younger pupils. In particular, we are watching the antics of Mortimer, who is not actually a younger pupil, he is a contemporary of ours. Mortimer is being a plane. It is 1970, it's my last year at Anglesey Secondary Modern and my friends and I are...

I enjoyed this memoir. It reminded me a bit of Kerry Hudson, Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-cream Float Before He Stole My Ma . Only it wasn’t Tony Hogan that stole Damian Leighton Barr’s mum but Logan the plumber. Glen is one of those taciturn men that does twelve-hour shifts in the Craig (Ravenscraig Steelwork) and says things like ‘make your bed and lie in it’. He makes good money and they are one of the first in the street to own a colour telly...

I think I’ve read this good book before. I get that sometimes. Words wash over me and through me and I’m not really reading, although I am. For the record, I read ‘The International Bestseller’ a few weeks ago, again, or not again (as this might have been the first time). Just to remind myself, where I look at words every day, Lorna Byrne sees angels. (I don’t know if Angels is a proper noun, or is it a bit like cows or sheep? No capital letter...

This week's picks are a bit different from usual in that they are linked. It goes to show how reading another person's work can spark a different but related bit of creativity in ourselves, with wonderful results. The original piece was Jane Hyphen's brilliant story 'I Woke Up (in inverted commas)'. Whether as warning for the future or commentary on the present, it sends shivers down the spine: https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/i-woke-...

This is a story that begins with a touching faith in the power and scope of the internet and ends with some very old technology indeed. I've always had a lot of faith in the ability of the internet to answer just about any odd or bizarre question you can throw at it. No matter what peculiarity you happen to be interested in, you can pretty much guarantee that someone, somewhere has been interested in it too and has already done the necessary...

Spring is here and the cherries are ripening. So many it's been hard to select the most succulent. Rhiannon's poem is so vividly executed it transported me back to that special place - the North Pembrokeshire coastal path: https://www.abctales.com/story/rhiannonw/arrival-%E2%80%93-evening-wander Parson Thru takes us on a stroll too in another eloquent snapshot of the travelling life - it;s our poem of the week: https://www.abctales.com/story/...

A couple of events over the Bank Holiday weekend set me thinking (which is a novelty). The first was on Sunday, when I attended my second day of training, as a volunteer, to learn how to man the Ticket Office at the Staffordshire Narrow Gauge Railway (SNGR) at Amerton Farm near Stowe-by-Chartley https://amertonrailway.co.uk/ , better known as Amerton Railway. Just before you start thinking 'Two days! Strewth he must be slow on the uptake!',...

In store in S..... local supermarket, a man starts shouting about someone having a poor credit history because they (and I did btw) pick up a vanilla gift visa card.... eek! lol! Somewhat surprised I watched the Supermarket Manager grab the offending neo-nazi by the ear and tell him off... I wasn't sure whether to say something or not, only he did seem to be a little below normal, and so I resisted... who wants to get down to their level? A day...

This is a short enough book to read in one, longish, gulp. It begins with an admission Matt Haig makes about 2014. Thirteen years ago I knew this couldn’t happen. I was going to die, you see. Or go mad. There was no way I would still be here. Sometimes I doubted I would even make the next ten minutes… One of the key symptoms of depression is to see no hope. No future. A book about depression need not be depressing. We all nod at the statistics;...