Autumn is possibly the time of year that makes me most furious when I’m in the countryside. It’s here again, worse luck, and as always is disgusting and messy. Look at the state of this path I found a few autumns ago in Gloucestershire, a county I try
It's remarkable just how stone cold dead an ill-fitting narrator can kill an audiobook: someone who fails to disguise their disinterest in the story and characters, clearly has no grasp of the book's intentions, or quite simply has the wrong voice for the material. As an
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The full version of today's post is for paid subscribers only. You can read all of it by subscribing here, at a price of your choice. There are several levels, but since moving away from Substack I have introduced a £2 one (or £20 a year if you
Once the algorithm had shown the post to enough people, the dissenting voices would begin: it’s not good to steal sheep… I am informing the US authorities about this… what about the sheep’s owner… have I not thought of him/her and his/her feelings?
This post is free for everyone to read but on the off chance you'd like to support my writing you can do so here, at a price of your choice from £20 per year (you can also make a one-off donation here). By subscribing, you will get access
I didn't realise when I woke up this morning that I was going to write a spooky story in its entirety, nor quite what it was going to be about (apart from an unnerving memory from my childhood about a wrong number and a light in a haunted
I liked the music of Belle and Sebastian. Dave preferred the smell of dead crows.
It was 2011 and I had driven up from Norfolk, where I was living at the time, to Nottinghamshire to see my mum and dad. Not long after I arrived, my dad took me to one side. “TOM, CAN I HAVE A WORD?” he said. When my dad says, “TOM,
A couple of years ago, during one of the many times I was hunting far and wide for a house to rent, the confusing listing pictured above kept coming up in my search. It prompted many questions: How could anyone afford to pay £20,000 PCM to rent ANYTHING to
Subscribe now I'm reposting this piece I wrote a little while ago about my mum and dad's art, which some you might have seen, but many of you won't, since I also wanted to let you know about a few bits and bobs the
“Pixy/Piskie: This is the standard term in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset for a fairy, though many writers from the early 19th Century onwards have insisted that the two races are quite distinct.. (A pixie’s) best-known characteristic is causing people to lose their way, even in a familiar neighbourhood: