Shores of Night

Geek is hot these days, its everywhere you look; a trend that's been building up for at least a decade. We have a superhero films that don't suck and TV shows that are openly fantasy and immense hits. Science is hot and some of the most influential people in entertainment are gamers, geeks, and other formerly maligned groups. There seems to be more and more to be geeky over too, from the things mentioned above to computer games, comics, novels and a hundred other things. It's an expanding field, taking in new view points, including more and more people until its starting consume the mainstream. We don't just live in Gothic times, but geeky ones too. Perhaps as a result of this, I find myself looking at all the things out there cherry picking what I like out there in geekdom. I'm not a huge fan of television, simply because I find it a bit too passive; if I do watch stuff it tends to be cartoons and anime, though I would like to see Sens8 and Penny Dreadfuls as I...

I've been thinking about my dream home a lot recently, building it as a retreat from the world, if you like. Being a writer, I decided to set it down and share it. Climb the lane, the one that's barely used and is bounded by dry stone walls. Keep going for about twenty minutes and you'll find our place; a little cottage set back from the road. You'll know it when you see it, there's a little wooden gate, stained almost black, set in the wall. It's got a little American style post box next to it; one of the ones that has a flag to raise when there's post inside. Don't worry about cars, they're rare as hen's teeth around here. The last one came by weeks ago. Pause by the gate for a moment. Take in the garden; tightly packed flower beds full of roses, red and white, hellebore and poppies. An apple tree sits over to one side, just big enough to bear blossom. In a few years it will have branches heavy with fruit. Open the gate, and step through;...

The fairy tale is one the bedrocks of western culture. Cautionary tales of wonder and delight, they were created, and eventually written down, to provide moral or simple lessons to live your life by and became of particularly significance for the education and socialisation of children in the early Nineteenth Century. They are about more than just entertainment, but imparted disguised wisdom and common sense. The Grimms and Hans Christian Anderson twisted their purpose a little, to make them fit the aspirant middle classes and the gender roles of the Nineteenth Century, which were becoming steadily more separate as women were pushed into the home and men became the principle bread winners. In Jack Zipes' Fairytale and the Art of Subversion , he notes that in just two years, 1810 and 1812,  Snow White goes from simply having to tend the Dwarves' house to keep her place there, to a long list of chores and the threat of punishment for failing to do so, for example. This was a t...

Something of a cheat, while I work on something a bit bigger and pondery, I wanted to post some of my favourite poems, because I'm thinking about poetry a lot at the moment. Catherine Smith: Heckmondwycke https://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/catherine-smith-six-poems/ Catherine came to do a Master Class at the course I did and this poem struck me as sweet and funny and so very earthy. Kirstin Heibel-Steitz: Sublime http://ohmyfoes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/sublime.html A friend, who is a poet, a damn good poet. This poem makes me feel the winter days and appreciate them all the more. Philip Larkin: This be the Verse This has been stuck in my head for a few years, I like the gently humourous fashion Larkin's reading of it here brings it to the fore. William Blake: The Tyger A beautiful poem that speaks of such majesty. Dylan Thomas: Do Not Go Gentle into That Goodnight Lastly I love the defiance in this, the clinging on reluctant to go into...

Yesterday I went off on an adventure, off up to Liverpool to see a friend I haven't seen for years, probably more than a decade. I haven't been to Liverpool since 2001, when I lived up there, I always meant to go back but for some reason I hadn't, just got caught up in life I suppose, and when I did go off from Birmingham it was always south, to London and all its museums and galleries. As my wife was off meeting a friend and normally I would have stayed home to write, or do something hum drum, but I wanted to do something different, and which didn't involve being pestered by cats (I love them but they're not always the most peaceful company, and as Hobbes is being kept indoors at present, he's decided I'm the best toy). So I wanted to get out, and sent my friend Lesley an email to see if she could get a day away from family.  As you might be able to tell... she could, and so I bolted out of the house yesterday morning and headed up that way on the tr...