I did not quite know what to expect of this show. After all, who is it who thinks Afghanistan is funny anyway?About 10 or so minutes into the show it occurred to me that what it was. It was a bloke in a pub, who’d been to Afghanistan, and who was a lovie, and who... Continue Reading →
Review – Dream of a King
Wow! This was simply thrilling stuff. Martin Luther King Jnr., in his Memphis hotel room, talking to his biographer, recalling his life, his inspirations, his struggles. Taking phone calls: the FBI, harassing him, recording him, bullying him. Stokely Carmichael about the tactics of the great march on Washington, his wife who has heard the FBI... Continue Reading →
Review – Waiting for Hamlet
A brilliant idea. The lost and wandering ghosts of King Hamlet and "alas I knew him well" Yorik, arguing, debating,mocking each other as they discuss a way to frighten the shite out of the castle battlements guards and annonce tot the world that King Hamlet was murdered most foul.. It's funny and poignent witty and... Continue Reading →
NOTTINGHAM CASTLE STAFF-BLACK OR WHITE – JOIN A UNION
I got myself involved in a small controversy over there on Twitter. I was reading a fairly vigorous thread from a group called “Staff of Colour”, about their many grievances against their employer, who is Nottingham Castle. The specific nature of their grievances is quite difficult to discern, but I’ll come to... Continue Reading →
NOTTINGHAM CASTLE STAFF-BLACK OR WHITE – JOIN A UNION
I got myself involved in a small controversy over there on Twitter. I was reading a fairly vigorous thread from a group called “Staff of Colour”, about their many grievances against their employer, who is Nottingham Castle. The specific nature of their grievances is quite difficult to discern, but I’ll come to that later. They... Continue Reading →
Don’t Support the Castle Boycott
This post is a follow-up to “Why the call to boycott Nottingham Castle is wrong” Available here/ Rather predictably, because I sought to throw doubt upon the validity of the call to boycott, I have been identified as a white man and declared to be a racist. In fairness, such a charge is always... Continue Reading →
Why the call to boycott Nottingham Castle is WRONG
The Boycott is an extremely powerful tool. An extremely powerful word. To call upon the general public to withdraw from commercial cultural and social relationships with the target of the boycott requires exceptional grounds to be justifiable. Originally it was used against Landlords evicting their tenants in Ireland. It was the 19th-century form of... Continue Reading →
Woman of my Dreams
It was a strange phone call. It could have been from a geriatric dating agency for old codgers like me. But in fact, it was a clinical questionnaire for a forthcoming MRI scan. Still, for a confused person, and I am quite often confused, you might understand why I was getting a bit excited: Are... Continue Reading →
A wee referendum in the north.
The nationalists, in Scotland, are in the driving seat and appear quite unstoppable in their determination to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom and to go it alone. They hold nearly all the cards for the coming “consultative referendum” and, presuming success, the inevitable actual referendum that will follow. Scotland may become independent without... Continue Reading →
Democracy. A Brexit benefit.
The principal factor that sealed my vote in the Brexit referendum was that of the “democracy deficit”, so widely evident in the politics and accountability of the European Union. There is no academic analysis of this deficit that can adequately explain or motivate sufficient anger or concern as to make it a central feature of... Continue Reading →
Let Us Pray
I prefer the sound of Christian bells To the cry of the muezzin The sacred hymn to the sung adhan Rectors rather than imans The steepled church to the minaret, The oaken pew to the woven mat But our gods are both the same.
Was that You?
Yer fart more frequently with age It just ‘appens There’s nowt about it to be done With age Yer lose control of your audible bum
A War Poem
Dulce et decorum est to wage a keyboard war Safe from guns and constant bombs Unsplashed by blood or gore From behind your desk no taste of fear, nor any risk Your shots are but Alt + Print Screen That you can post on Instagram, Tic Toc Facebook, or tweet To ensure you will be... Continue Reading →
WATERLOO STATION
I was in the capital, traveling on the number 139 Bus, en route to London’s Borough market. It required a change at Waterloo, for the number 381. For no particular reason I decided to go and have a look around Waterloo station, perhaps because, for me and thousands of other soldiers, it had been such... Continue Reading →
Dublin days, a soldier’s memoir.
I wrote this play, in the vernacular of the Nottingham accent, about the fate of British Soldiers from Nottingham and Newark and Derbyshire, who were sent to Ireland in 1916 to crush the Easter Rising. Yet to be performed, so if you know any theatre groups in the East Midlands - drop me a line!... Continue Reading →
Love letter to a tank.
I don't get that big a number of hits and visits to my posts, although there are one or two exceptions. By far the post registering the most hits was's a story about being a boy on the Rock of Gibraltar during the 1950s. you can read it again, or for the first time by... Continue Reading →
Spaghetti and diarrhea
Entrance to the Boar's Head public house and country hotel To a black-tie dinner at the rather pokey country house pub/hotel, the Boars Head at Ripley in Yorkshire, a place well overdue for a refurbishment. Mostly doctors. I have observed over the years that Doctors, when gathered together, a bit like lawyers or soldiers, tend... Continue Reading →
Surviving the U boat sinking of the RMS Laconia 12 September 1942
Gibraltar: British families, survivors from the RMS Laconia, torpedoed by German U-Boat on the 12th September 1942 RMS Laconica was originally commissioned as an ocean-going luxury passenger ship for the Cunard line. With the outbreak of WWII she was requisitioned by the Admiralty and fitted with eight six inch guns and two three inch guns.... Continue Reading →
A walk round the neighborhood
It has been more than a year, (B.C. in fact, or before covid) since I was last at the London flat. It had become a little dusty, (the flat, not London) but it was comforting to see the familiar paintings that adorn the place and furnish the rooms. I took a walk round the neighbourhood,... Continue Reading →
Shoolboys wearing skirts – Some thoughts on Gender identification
A piece of doggeral written in response to an Irish Schools decision to allow boys to wear skirts. In Limerick they wear them long, yards and yards of cloth to the ankle worn, whereas in Cork they wear them short , in nearly all the schools where girls are taught In Newbridge they... Continue Reading →
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 