My pint of choice is Guinness; it has been for many years and, with the occasional exception or if the bar doesn’t have it on tap, you can be confident it’s what I’ll order. An early finish today – we’ll, not even a start, really, as I had a non-work engagement first thing – saw…
Day 04/365 (2018)
For many people the formative days of any new year are often concerned primarily with organising, sometimes reorganising, and in planning for the twelve months ahead. With this in mind, last week I ordered a new diary insert and stocks of paper for my trusty, some may say “old fashioned”, Filofax. Today they arrived and…
NetGalley#07: “The Wolves of Winter” by Tyrell Johnson
This was a review copy kindly provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. I found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable and thrilling read. The author, Tyrell Johnson, breathes life and vitality into his characters, especially our heroine, with his prose and dialogue; he makes every single word…
Day 03/365 (2018)
Suffering from a wee bit of a bad back these past few days, I was laid on the floor to alleviate the discomfort whilst I worked on giving my blog site a much needed tidy up and facelift. After popping to the kitchen for a few minutes I returned to discover Elphie the Mini Schnauzer…
Day 02/365 (2018)
Taken from my bedroom window, this striking sunrise over a Brighouse slowly emerging from the dark of night seemed an apt picture to snap for the first day back at work after the festive break.
Day 01/365 (2018)
A few years back, on January 1st 2015, I undertook my “365 Project” – to take one picture each day for the whole of that year and, once completed, print the images in a small album for posterity. I snapped the pictures on my iPhone and found the project was enjoyable to do. Some days…
What goes on at SleepOut, stays at SleepOut. A hard hitting expose.
Hello all you wonderful sponsorers (??). Is that the correct term? Who cares? I like it. It is 0736 Friday – the morning after the night before – and I am back from Valley Parade and my “sleep out” for CentrePoint and their work helping homeless young ‘uns in our area. Am I tired? No,…
The old lady and the flu jab.
An old lady at the doctor’s surgery this morning was forced to sit beside me due to the lack of available chairs – today being “flu jab” day, the place was somewhat packed. As I too was there for my flu jab, I had taken my jacket off and was wearing a tee shirt so…
One sentence – Creative Writing exercise.
My Creative Writing class exercise this week was to select a book from the selection available and then choose one sentence and use that as the beginning of a piece of writing. The books had been chosen simply based on their bright and colourful covers. If one of the books was something we had previously…
NetGalley#06: “East of Hounslow” by Khurrum Rahman
This was a review copy kindly provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. Where to start? At the beginning is best they say, so here goes. Back in June of this year I attended an event at Bradford Literary Festival and was intrigued by the passionate way in…
“The Prime of Ms Dolly Greene” by E. V. Harte. (The Tarot Detective #01)
“The Prime of Ms Dolly Greene” by E. V. Harte This was a review copy kindly provided by the publishers in exchange for a fair and honest review. Righty ho, let’s get straight down to business shall we? What did I think of this book? Well, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I found it to…
“Is That What You Meant To Do?”
**In January 2017 I entered a competition in “Writing Magazine” to write a piece that began with the line, “Is that what you meant to do?” I discovered in July that I didn’t win or get placed but winning wasn’t really on my agenda when I wrote it – just as well! – and I simply enjoyed the challenge…
“A Rising Man” by Abir Mukherjee
I had seen this book displayed prominently during recent visits to bookshops. The sumptuous cover artwork had provoked me to pull it from the shelves and read the blurb on the back. But that, initially, was as far as I got. I wasn’t sure that I was quite ready for a tale set in Calcutta…
NetGalley#05: “The Girl Who Came Back” by Kerry Wilkinson
This was a review copy kindly provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. I had just come off a great streak of form with my reading choices; a “hat-trick” of wonderful debut crime novels by new British writers whose work left me eager to turn the pages and…
Gavin Dimmock. Writer. 