Literature
Postcard from Taiwan
The Alishan Forest Railway runs from the coastal plain into the heart of Taiwan’s empty highlands. It was built in 1912 by the Japanese for the purpose of transporting timber from the mountains for the [more…]
Blog
Arts
The Eurovision Song Contest 2024 (Preview)
Oh dear – It’s that time of year again… Don your taffeta and sequinned best, pull on your bondage trousers, lube up your leather chaps and please be welcome to the annual festival of flounce [more…]
Arts
Always Worth Saying’s Question Time Review
Question Time 9th May 2024 The Panel: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative) Lisa Nandy (Labour) Grace Blakeley (Author) Humphrey Cobbold (CEO of PureGym) Venue: Stoke-on-Trent Lisa Nandy is on Question Time too often. Tonight’s appearance takes her [more…]
Fiction
Jinnie’s Story- Book Six, Chapter Twenty-Nine
As Izzy drove away, Jinnie hurried into the Green Acres reception and was delighted to find someone she knew, Adrienne, on the desk. Adrienne had been on the staff from when Jinnie had worked on [more…]
Conservatives
Is there a new consigliere on the horizon?
There is much fear concerning our next Government, it will be Labour whatever happens, but let’s look on the bright side a bit. The Sunak administration does not deserve to survive, it will be obliterated [more…]
Hobbies
A Scottish Odyssey
The memsahib & I decided on one last Scottish tour of The Highlands, our fifth, before we run down the curtain. I have some Scottish ancestry, my grandmother’s clan was Bruce although a lowland clan [more…]
21st Century
Macron Keeps Discrediting France
At this rate, there’s no longer any credible chance that France will revive its independent foreign policy traditions after the five major foreign policy mistakes that Macron made over just the last two years. He’s [more…]
Culture
An English to English Dictionary
I have long wondered if a dictionary existed that translates the bastardised version of the English language used in America to our original version. That bloke Webster has a lot to answer for, compiling his [more…]
20th Century
In The Steps of The First Army, Part Six
“In the sixth of his articles John Alldridge writes of Bizerta, where a song was born, an Army vindicated itself, and a gigantic building plan went awry.” – Manchester Evening News, November 22 1949 Bizerta, [more…]