Hello, and thank you for visiting my site. I hope that you'll return often and always find something of interest about my world and what inspires me to pick up a pen. (This is a figure of speech, unfortunately. My handwriting is terrible!) Here's what I've been up to recently...
Spike no longer!
Jeffrey Holland’s one-man show ‘and this is my friend Mr Laurel’ at Ripon Arts Hub last night was very entertaining. Inspired by a love (ever since boyhood visits to the cinema) of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, his monologue was an excellent blend of humour and pathos.
I also enjoyed the second half, when he came down amongst the audience out of costume for a Q & A session. (Can it really be 40 years since ‘Hi-de-Hi’?) As a curtain raiser for this year’s Ripon Theatre Festival, it was an ideal choice.
31 March, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Writing challenges
A.E.Housman
Here dead we lie because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.
In the style of Ian Macmillan
So we’ve kicked t’ bucket
And does tha want ter know why?
Cos we wasn’t conchies
And nooan were gonna ‘and us white feathers
Or call Yorksher lads shirkers
We got usselves organised
Joined t’Pals and off we set for France
Us mothers wept o’ course
But they was proud. Us fathers too.
We’d come back ‘eroes, or so we thought,
Afore we turned nineteen.
It weren’t to be.
Pity really.
10 March, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Books and Beverages
3 March, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Glowing Bright
What a treat it was to watch Alison Neil’s one-woman show about the life of Marie Curie! Having set it in the luxurious cabin of an ocean liner on the way back from a successful but exhausting tour of the United States, Alison acted out the story of Madame Curie’s life from her birth in 1867 in Russian occupied Poland to her twilight years.
As someone who gave up both Physics and Chemistry with a sigh of relief at the end of the Third form – although I did once have the honour of shaking Nobel prize winner Werner Heisenberg’s hand while I was teaching in Germany – I expected to be baffled by an account of the Curies’ scientific discoveries, but Alison took care to deliver the information in such a way that I could follow most of it with ease.
I’ve already seen her show based on the life of Mrs Beeton and look forward to being in the audience for others when they come round our way. Highly recommended!
19 February, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Ripon Writers’ Group in the Stray Ferret
Great article today by Tim Flanagan, who always has Ripon’s interests at heart. Thank you, Tim. https://thestrayferret.co.uk/ripon-writers-group-extends-invitation-to-new-members/
5 February, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Remember ‘the curate’s egg’?
Right Reverend Host: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad Egg, Mr Jones!”; The Curate: “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!”
True Humility by George du Maurier, originally published in Punch, 9 November 1895.
This morning was rather like that for me. Invited to give a talk on ‘filler’ writing for a local group, I took along a selection of my books for display and – with any luck – to sell. The talk itself went well, but disaster struck when I knocked over the glass of water I’d been given and placed on the same table. Entirely my own fault, I know, but still very disappointing.
Above are some of the books drying out at home later. Others are irretrievably damaged. Lesson learned but a bitter pill to swallow.
1 February, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
A cracking good read!
This fast moving story, the third in the series about Edinburgh detective Hunter Wilson, certainly kept me on the edge of my seat. It has a large cast of characters, some new and some recurring, but short chapters and clear changes to different points of view combined to keep the narrative clear in my head. That said, the revelation at the end caught me completely by surprise, which is as it should be. I would thoroughly recommend this series to lovers of police procedural novels and am looking forward very much to reading about Hunter’s next case.
Here is the link to purchase ‘Hunter’s Force’
Val Penny has an Llb degree from the University of Edinburgh and her MSc from Napier University. She has had many jobs including hairdresser, waitress, banker, azalea farmer and lecturer but has not yet achieved either of her childhood dreams of being a ballerina or owning a candy store.
Until those dreams come true, she has turned her hand to writing poetry, short stories,nonfiction books,and novels. Her novels are published by SpellBound Books Ltd.
Val is an American author living in SW Scotland. She has two adult daughters of whom she is justly proud and lives with her husband and their cat.
25 January, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Foreshadowing ‘Shadows’?
23 January, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
Alcatraz revisited
A conversation last autumn sparked off a memory from a few years back and I decided to write it up for the Reader’s Digest. It’s in the February 2023 issue and, by a strange coincidence, so is a letter I wrote in response to a travel article about Arctic exploration.
Thwarted by the Covid 19 outbreak in 2020, it’s been good to reminisce over happier times and look forward to the next big adventure.
18 January, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story
2023 is here!
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan? asked 15th century poet François Villon. Well, my resolutions have often melted away before Twelfth Night, but this year I’m determined to hold onto one. No longer drowning in nostalgia for the snows of yesteryear or anything else that occurred before this morning, I shall be making a point of looking forward rather than back.
A very Happy New Year to all my readers!
1 January, 2023 - Make the first comment on this story