Writing

Ramblecast: Home

Part One: Part Two: My first ever novel, VILLAGER, is now up for funding. If you'd like to reserve a copy, you can do so here. This is my most recent book, in case you'd like a read of it. If you feel compelled to, you

Writing

The Real Countryside

The nearest river to my house is called the Avon. It’s one of six River Avons in the UK and possibly the quietest of the bunch, although I couldn’t say for sure because I have only met three of the others in person and nobody - not even

Writing

Ramblecast: a three rivers walk

Part one: Part two: My first ever novel, VILLAGER, is now up for funding. If you'd like to reserve a copy, you can do so here. This is my most recent book. If you feel compelled to, you can subscribe to this website, either just for email updates

Writing

Ramblecast: Butterfly Lane

Writing

An American Singer

I’m not supposed to like the music of Taylor Swift, but who says so? I’m not going to name names but I definitely don’t think my enthusiasm for her records would meet with the approval of the amorphous voice out there in society that demands that you

Writing

September Walks

After an energetic walk on the coast with my friend, we sat on the village green and I was introduced to a thatcher. My friend knows every human person aged between 24 and 58 in the whole of Devon, Cornwall, Somerset and Dorset, so it made total sense that he

Writing

Walking Diary, 8.9.2020: Giant Puffball Mushroom

Writing

Late Summer, 2020: A Personal Compendium

I have shingles at the moment. I remember at various points in my life people talking in a tone of great pity and sympathy about other people who had shingles but I don’t think I’d ever properly considered what it was. Now I know. What happens is a

Writing

Brief Encounter: Bruce Lacey And His Robot Friends (2012)

This is Rosa Bosom,’ said Bruce Lacey, showing me into the living room of his chilly, cluttered Norfolk farmhouse and pointing towards a seven-foot robot with a tailor’s dummy arms, a chest full of wires and large red lips. ‘Her name stands for Radio Operated Simulated Actress Battery Operated

Writing

Water

My house flooded this month. Twice. First, water seeped through the back wall of the living room, turning the floorboards black. Next, it poured through the kitchen ceiling from the bathroom. It was hard to tell at first if the two floods were related, and, though now it seems more

Writing

Brief Encounter: Ronald Blythe (2009)

I walked down soft lanes past the cars of my youth, abandoned in orchards and green lanes, to the house of the writer Ronald Blythe and his cat, Kitty. It was a very old house, with bendy walls. Ronald’s coffee was head-meltingly strong and as we drank it and

Writing

14 Thoughts About Writing

It’s twenty years since I began writing my first book. I had the title for it, Nice Jumper, long before I’d fully worked out what the book was going to be. Like most of my books, it’s about the thing it’s about (golf) but also not