I've been blogging for a long time, but what was once called "push button publishing" has found itself left behind in an era of social media tweets and Facebook posts on the one hand, and web zines and memes on the other.I've been not writing that much here for quite some time, an the odd review or feature couldn't really make up for […]
With 2019 - and the decade - coming to a rapid close, the first lists of "best albums of the 20-teens" have started to come out. Whereas the younger me could tell you what year any album had come out, everything gets a bit hazy around the millennium...and continues to be so.Was "The Suburbs", easily my favourite Arcade Fire album as long […]
The three novels Edward St. Aubyn wrote about "Patrick Melrose" between 1992-94, though they've since been expanded to a quintology, are really three long chapters of the same book. In "Brideshead Revisited" Sebastian Flyte warns Charles Ryder about his family, not wanting them to first charm him, and then destroy him; but any such w […]
I had a bit of a flurry of getting short stories published a few years ago, but nothing in the last year or so. Strangely the last story I had published was picked up for Best British Short Stories 2018. I think I've lost the thread of who is publishing what, but doing a bit of writer's admin, I've found I've got about half a dozen comple […]
I've been thinking of doing more visual art for a while, and finally having a space of my own where I can set up a "studio" has led me to do it. Not being an "artist" I wondered why I was wanting to do this as well as my writing and music. Here are a few thoughts.I am not an artist. Or rather I haven’t the skill of an artist, even if […]
Inflation isn't going down anytime soon. Just had my 1st April energy price rise....lower per therm rate but higher… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…2 days ago