Occasionally, when I've finished my weekly instalment of Josiah and Archibald's adventures, I agonize over the jokes and whether they are funny, or not. Mostly, I tend to leave well alone and not be tempted to go back and change things, except for this week! There was one joke that I just felt didn't work properly and it was bothering me. Fortunately I woke up this morning with a better version in mind. So, this week's 'Dead Reckoning' episode...

Derren Brown is magic. He writes stuff too. Much of which I’ve read. Here he condenses 17 chapters of his international bestseller, Happy . I’ve read that too. I’m unhappy that 99.99% of the stuff I read, I instantly forget. That should worry me. But you know what Derren Brown said? Well, if you don’t, I’ll remind you (and myself). ‘None of this is real.’ Happiness does not exist, but it’s one of those stories we make up and remind ourselves...

PREFACE.. I started writing these quirky poems and tales shortly after 6th July 2015 My partner of 3 years, at that time, had just undergone a successful maxillectomy to remove a tumour from his upper jaw. The after treatment required several doses of radiation followed by an arduous routine of learning to eat and swallow again. We had always lived in our own separate houses, so I would sit in my bed most evenings armed with my iPad, find a...

Henry Marsh is a neurosurgeon. One of the 200 brain surgeons in Britain. I should use the past tense because he’s retired. He wrote a book about that too in 2023, And Finally . His fist book was the 2014 bestseller, Do No Harm . As well as being a master surgeon, he’s a competent DIY craftsman and a master wordsmith. This is the in-between book of his trilogy, I hadn’t read. Or at least thought I hadn’t. But when Marsh relates confessing to a...

Posted by airyfairy. As always, many thanks to everyone for the wonderful contributions this week. Story of the Week goes to 'Anyone At All' by Sean McNulty. This surreal, funny, bonkers but totally enchanting tale of a place where ink flows through the landscape and you can get 'a billion copies of your appalling opus, bound in fine leather and translated into 7,247 languages' will bring a rueful smile to any writer's lips: Anyone At All |...

Balance in a Multiverse Light needs darkness and vice versa, for without it everything would cease to exist. Like a long walk on a small planet between the near and far: forever in wonder, of things that Never fade away. An action equals a reaction, elsewhere. Yin and Yang. Karama with all her distant objects moving. Into twilight realms; what is called reality? This cosmic balance, between worlds, beyond our view, with such momentum that it...

Assimilate To take into conformity and incorporate, as one's own, absorb. Unconscious Alliance: waiting for nothing in return. We only have forever sworn to secrecy. That's hiding in plain sight; without form or void. In an artificial, lifelike bird flying in sequence. Watch as they disappear, separate only by time. Now and not yet holding their absence in the twilight. All is but a dream, and everything is so clearly real. Yet, it still...

As Time Continues The form of its manifestation. There will be light step by step. As time continues. Waiting to believe reaches back to the beginning as the end unfolds. precisely toward one destination in between two points. That has merged into a decisive decision, change reaction Steady and slow to come, easy to go. It shows in your flow. Almost there, just out of reach. Like salmon fish out of water resting in a tree, built nests surrounded...

CHANGING SEASON The legacy one chooses to leave behind, in the memories of faded time. Beneath the same sun from day to night, glimpses of the way beyond Vanishing, as though absence from the conscious world, memories of time spent on earth. Those dreams that were once far-off beacons of the future at a cost. Life distant flickers, until small moments flow; waiting for the magic hour to glow. Starlight in your eyes, filled with hope. When...