As I’ve become older I do make small talk, rather than make conversation, with strangers. I have a stammer which I can keep at bay most of the time, though it’s a lottery based on situation and mood. All the sam […]

Patrick Hamilton. The canon is slim but intense. Novels filled with hopes quashed and loves unrequited. You need to be ready for that. PG Wodehouse. 93 standalone novels plus an almost infinite numbers of […]

My brother was a team leader in the Northumberland National Park Fell Rescue Team at the time. They were involved in the recovery of some of the wreckage that fell across the border area. It was horrifying.

Pre-First World War in my opinion. 1900’sh. The Belle Époque wasn’t all that belle

Ha ha! Pleased you know it! I’m resolutely not from Darras Hall though. Proudly from the village itself. Product of a cooncil hoose. Most of my school pals were from the glittering palaces of Darras so I k […]

I shan’t be wearing them. Tits oot for the lads.

I should be alright. I’ve still got ‘Keegan is Magic’ tattooed across my knackers so I should be ok at Checkpoint Charlie at Gateshead. I’ll have to get rid of my coat though.

The Master Plan is to eventually form a pincer movement from Berkshire and take by force either Hexham or Morpeth as and when the Home Counties born offspring finishes their university edumercation.

The very same

I’ve been to Norfolk only once. To the beating heart of Norfolk Police HQ for work reasons. So it was an early train and a day in a meeting room on-site. I could have been anywhere else in the country. T […]

You both play bass? *licks pencil* *makes note* I see. Carry on.

I may have misconstrued. I for one would love to meet @fentonsteve. A man who plays bass in a Quo covers band is a fine man. However faced with a choice of looking at tents in an exhibition centre or […]

I wouldn’t expect any further activity as exciting for a while after this. Given the high profile of who he was/is and the global media interest any potential charge will be painstakingly put together. The CPS w […]

Thank you so much for posting that. I’ve gone on a similar image hunt, and yes I was right about The Satan Bug. I owned all of those and quite a few more. Puppet On a Chain is gruesome. Wouldn’t pass mus […]

The Fontana cover to Alastair Maclean’s ‘The Satan Bug’ was a clinker. A man in 70’s hair and ‘tache abducting a blonde woman, pistol raised firing at the reader. In front of a Mini Cooper. As I recall.

Desmond Bagley! The Tightrope Men! Oh God, I’m Proustian rushing! I read all the Fontana paperback editions when I was a kid. Those with the posed cover photos. Models caught in a scene from the plot l […]

Agreed

No. Has his government been the success that it’s needed to be to justify the majority it won. Again, no. Did the cutting of the Winter Fuel Allowance in month one eternally wing them with its appalling tone d […]

I like the name-checking of Miller and Noem. Forever in a Springsteen lyric to be heard over and over for years to come. How delightful for them and their families in future.

Passenger and ‘Let Her Go’ One of those turgid, banal stiff as a board chord progressions you learn in your first month on a guitar that goes on and on fucking on with lyrics rhyming the ‘o’ sound. Fuck off-o