This is Louise Welsh’s debut novel and the first of her work I’ve read. That old cliché applies here, it won’t be the last. It’s great, up there with Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory . I’m biased that way and like things to be parochial and have resonance with people I know and places I recognise. The setting is just up the road, a square mile of Hyndland and Crow Road. Not may folk understand that Downhill is a place and not just a state of mind...

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 17 Nov 2017 Two sad but thoughtful pieces for picks of the week. Poem of the week is the small but beautifully crafted, Dot, by John thornfield: https://www.abctales.com/story/john-thornfield/dot Story of the week is, Poppy, by gletherby: https://www.abctales.com/story/gletherby/poppy Here's the inspiration point - have fun! https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip Philip Sidney's blog

Two sad but thoughtful pieces for picks of the week. Poem of the week is the small but beautifully crafted, Dot, by John thornfield: https://www.abctales.com/story/john-thornfield/dot Story of the week is, Poppy, by gletherby: https://www.abctales.com/story/gletherby/poppy Here's the inspiration point - have fun! https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip

A river of humanity was moving towards the city hall from as far away as the furthest point of St Stephens,

starts yesterday, and possibly will finish this bit tomorrow... if the online info is correct this time!

I never read the same book twice, but this is my third, or fourth, reading of Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face . Joyce Carol Oates may yammer on, in fictional terms, about her characters finding their one true thing, but for every David Bowie there’s millions of Davie Bowieless strumming a guitar and never making anything of their life or art. There’s more writers than people with cancer. One reading of these books (and there are many ways...

Yesterday was a very emotional day. In the morning OH and I attended a full Civic ceremony of remembrance for the seven local people killed in the tram crash a year ago on 9.11.16. Our very own nine-eleven. Children from the primary school my kids attended and my grandson still attends led the singing, for the youngest victim, Dane Chinnery, was a former pupil and often a soloist himself. Dignitaries such as the MP, councillors, Croiydon Mayor,...

On the 6 th November – two men proved to me.... that they were still trying to play out their game. Isn't it a shame? Yesterday morning I went out to work, and spent some time first looking for card plastic envolopes – the kind you put around the finished craft cards to keep them clean and displayable. The shop had sold me the craft card pack, yet didn't have the corresponding size plastic envolope. I was a bit miffed and was about to go out to...

Story and Poem for the Month of October very kindly chosen by VeraClark: The most recent of Lille Dante’s Blue Books Restored Fragments gets Poem of the Month. It is a thoroughly accomplished series of fragmentation that straddles narrative poetry and prose-poetry. I love that this is work that refuses to conform to generic boxes. These are allegorical beads which colour memory and the taste of emotions. Each sequence stands alone as a fusion of...

Books don’t usually have corners. But (I guess) this one does. That’s one of the things that (kinda) annoyed me, Joyce Carol Oates has a tended to add extra bits of information in brackets. Her writing style didn’t (really) annoy me. What annoyed me was I felt the book was too long. War and Peace and the rebirth of the Russian nation as a leading European power in 1815 took less of a word count than it took for Soldier of God, Luther Amos Dunphy...