The Todmorden Tales is a collection of short stories that Brian & I wrote in the mid-90s for The Little Red Book, a little magazine we published at the time. We’d often talked about putting them all together into a book, and actually did so in 2020. It sold very poorly (mainly from lack of […]
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Val
A short update post – a lot has been going on since I last posted. Last year, after a long illness, my beloved Brian died. I am now on my own and thinking hard about my future. After two years of being a full-time carer, my health isn’t too good and I’ll need to move […]
When I was twenty-one or so and unemployed and single, I shared a flat with four others, all similarly un- and under-employed. It was very Young Ones at times – we squabbled over the cleaning rota, ate quite a lot of lentils, had a laid-back landlord who was into Jung and primal screaming. Our weekly […]
“It’s as if Luther, Line of Duty and Utopia all went to the pub together, emerged several hours later, steaming, and decided to form a supergroup.”
This post is a sort of run-on from the last. I had a bit of a rant there about how “diverse” characters (and I’m not talking just about trans) shouldn’t be shoehorned into a creative work without justification. Welp, I wasn’t really expecting to have my point proved so quickly.
Just finished John Scalzi’s Old Mans War. It’s now been out for 15 years and is one of those books that everyone who knows SF says you ought to read. So I finally did. Clearly a homage to Robert Heinlein, it’s not a bad read at all – I only skipped a few pages, near […]
WARNING: SPOILERS APLENTY So, having dealt with Designated Survivor (which didn’t survive), I’ve been watching the first series of Mr Mercedes. I loved the book and was interested to see what sort of mess the adaptation would turn out to be. Up till now, I’ve seen screen adaptations of eight King works – The Shining, […]
SPOILERS AHEAD Well, I’ve carried on watching and have now finished Ep 15 (of 22). I’m not really excited about it, but I’ve paid for the whole series so I’m determined to get my money’s worth. Besides, I am mildly curious about how the story will pan out. The US has turned out some excellent […]
CONTAINS SPOILERS I only learned about this US TV series when I saw a post on Twitter about a trailer for the second series, which featured a shot of one of the characters sitting in a London cafe. This trailer followed the time-hallowed Hollywood convention of using signifiers of typical English life – in this […]
It’s daffodil time here! This isn’t really a painting – well, it obviously isn’t. It’s a photo I put through a few filters.