I find this ABC Tales website a warm and welcoming community where writers of all abilities can share their work in the knowledge that it will be appreciated and encouraged. But what makes the site particularly special for me is that a close friend from long ago was a popular member here, regularly posting poetry and prose years before I joined. Julia Macpherson (ABC username Overthetop1 ) left this world far too soon, and at a point where too few had recognised the high standard of her writing talent. Following her death in 2016, her mother Coral (ABC’s seashore ) and her sister Sarah worked with Cerasus Poetry, and with the support of ABC members and the MIND mental health charity, to publish a compilation of her work. I lost touch with Julia in the mid-1980s, but found her again through ABC Tales and the pages of her book, Waiting For Another Velvet Morning .
Cheery me
Posted on Fri, 06 Feb 2026
I'm cheerful enough to get by thanks Makis. You're right, the hatred and the avarice have always been there but the situation appears to have worsened every time I watch the news. Is there music to fade out leprosy?
Read full commentPosted in They Can Only Do Harm
Rumen Radev
Posted on Tue, 03 Feb 2026
It's also a bit scary seeing Rumen Radev's photograph on the front page of the ABCTales website. It's probably the nicest place his picture's ever been.
Read full commentPosted in I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Tie-Dye My Raggy Socks
Our Ludo
Posted on Tue, 03 Feb 2026
Hello Kat.
Thanks for thinking about Ludo but really he’s grand these days. In the area where he had the hole in his leg the skin still looks a bit fragile but fur is growing over it gradually and he’s not in need of any special treatment...
Read full commentPosted in I Feel Like I’m Fixing to Tie-Dye My Raggy Socks
Exotica
Posted on Mon, 02 Feb 2026
Warm evenings spent in gardens always have a special feel to them. They conjure up exotica in some of the least exotic places. My own exotic memories of a Leeds council estate in the 1970s returned to the surface as I read your words. ...
Read full commentPosted in Tom All Alone (11)
Songs of Praise
Posted on Sun, 01 Feb 2026
Every day I'm tapping away at my Cyrillic typewriter. I get the Ш key and the Щ mixed up. Thankfully the word Калашников only appears a couple of times in my latest novel, The Lady in the Lada.
Thora Hird was always a great woman to have...
Read full commentPosted in I’ve Got a Gal in Tiramisu
Consciousness
Posted on Sat, 06 Oct 2018
I agree with you there. People tell me I’m lucky to be living where I live now. I used to say that I wasn’t so much lucky as determined. But looking back there were so many things that happened, good and bad, without which I wouldn’t have ended...
Read full commentPosted in How writing (and a cat called Daisy) may have saved my life...
ABC & Cats
Posted on Sat, 06 Oct 2018
That’s an incredible story Harry. It’s incredible how things miraculously fall into place. I found ABCTales because of a friend who I knew a long long time ago and who had been a member before my time and died before I found her again. But as a...
Read full commentPosted in How writing (and a cat called Daisy) may have saved my life...
Life
Posted on Sun, 01 Feb 2026
Everything's hard to get your head round when you're a kid. I find that things are hard to get my head round now but I'm so glad I'm not five anymore.
And the bird and the cat... it's not so easy to do with humans but with pets the...
Read full commentPosted in Tom All Alone (10)
Sunday Chilling
Posted on Sun, 01 Feb 2026
Hello Jenny.
There's not much chance of us seeing a New Snow Moon here either on account of there being so much new snow. It's been falling all day and we're told it'll continue to do so until around mid-day on Tuesday. So the sense of...
Read full commentPosted in I’ve Got a Gal in Tiramisu
Spider monitor
Posted on Sun, 01 Feb 2026
Ayup Kat.
I’d never heard of the Rorschach Inkblot Test until you brought it to light but I do remember doing the same sort of thing with poster paint in art lessons at school. Every single specimen came out as an enormously magnified ant’...
Read full commentPosted in I’ve Got a Gal in Tiramisu
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