Let me start this extremely digressive review with a long digression. My 18th birthday was in May 1992. Eighteen is a rite-of-passage birthday, though of course different teenagers arrive at it with differing levels of maturity. I've previously written about the way we have different "selves" - co-existing within us are personas that can differ … Continue reading Review – “Amorphous Albion” by Ben Graham (2018)
I wrote this a month or so ago, before we all entered the current COVID-19 nightmare. I can't help but worry about the lingering effect this will have on today's kids, long after the immediate emergency is over. Anyway, I wrote this in response to a Twitter CfP from @horrifyingbook who are looking to compile … Continue reading Children’s TV – The Stuff of Nightmares
It’s my birthday today. I’ve always liked that I share it with two favourite writers: poet and nature writer Kathleen Jamie (born 1962), and the master of mid-20th century English gothic, Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989). I’m going to take a brief look at du Maurier’s short story The Birds, which can be read as an … Continue reading “There’s been a breakdown at the BBC”: the rural horror of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘The Birds’
Hello. Flitting. The word suggests transience: quick, uncertain movements. Not lingering. And maybe that’s what posts should be: snapshots of where your head is, nothing over-thought. But ‘flitting’ is also the word – in Scotland anyway – for moving house. That suggests a stay of a much longer duration, of certainty and purpose. The things … Continue reading Flitting
Into the Gyre 