The False Knight on the Road

I’ve recently rediscovered my collection of folk music, a genre I like for the narratives contained in the songs, if not for the affected nasal drone that some singers affect for some reason. Listening this lunchtime I shuffled upon “The False Knight On The Road” which is on the face of it an encounter between […]

Mens sana in corpore sano

(Well I’m zero for two but I’m working on it)

New Year, New Cliche

I swear I didn’t set out to be one of those New Year resolution guys. I’ve always thought that if something needs doing or changing then you either do it when it needs to get done, or you don’t, and why should a date on a calendar be the boss of me etc. However since […]

Fallen

The Scent of Apples

She had been holding my hand, woolly glove in woolly glove, as we stumble-shuffled our way through the crowded market. Autumn chill was biting and the market was a treat not to miss. Stalls crowded with toys and trinkets, cakes and biscuits, and the beautiful smell of hot spiced wine and honey buns. We’d turned a corner […]

Brainscrub

The season finale of Doctor Who has been and gone, and I was profoundly disappointed by the entire season. The advent of the first female Doctor Who should have been a time of glorious reinvention for the show, broadening horizons and taking the opportunity to do something utterly fantastic to demonstrate how the character […]

Moving on

It feels like a chapter is coming to a close at last, and I hadn’t realised I’d been in it until I got to see the blank space at the end of the page and realised the facing page had a big number on it.

Why I Don’t Not Like The New Doctor Who Series

Just to get it out of the way, as I suspect it may be held up as a human shield in front of snipers, the reason I do not like the new Doctor Who series is NOT because it now has a female lead. I was thrilled to bits when the reveal of Jodie Whitaker […]

Making Up Is Hard To Do

But it is a lot of fun. A good friend of mine is having a birthday party later this month and, being of excellent judgement, he has decided to make it a costume party. The theme is movie characters and, since I went as one of my favourite masked psychopaths (V from V for Vendetta) […]

One from the (secret) vaults.

Yesterday I mentioned to a friend that before “A Step Beyond Context” I’d been working on a novel set in an early-Victorian magical subculture in England – but that I’d abandoned it because I couldn’t get the pacing right and it was too long and drawn out. I decided to dig it out just to […]