‘I feel that I deserved to die…I’m worthless.’ There are no happy endings here. The crimes these fathers and mothers have committed are against themselves. An infant son or daughter died, slowly cooked, strapped in the backseat of their car, because the father or mother got distracted and forgot they were there. It happens in the United States around 30 to 40 times a year and the number is growing. I’m reminded of another statistic from a bygone...

page 1 The idea of a semi-group appeals strongly to the everyday experience of time. Page 2 A restriction, a kind of “reversibility property” may be assumed, that is the existence of inverses. This leads to the concept of a dynamical system which is very popular in Poland. Page 3 Examples of semigoups in one-dimensional phase space as well as two examples of trajectories through 2D. They are all based on properties of the exponential function,...

Shakespeare is such and inspiration so thank you to Airyfairy for coming up with the brilliant idea - so many good pieces arose that I had to pick two. Story of the week goes to Jane Hyphen's tragic history, Anthony and Cleopatra - I defy you to read and not weep: https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/anthony-and-cleopatra Poem of the week goes to Forest Forever's comic/tragic/history - true love never did run smooth, (to mix my plays), but...

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/...