Train, planes and … Well, just trains, really.
I am not good with trains. A few months ago I went visit some excellent friends near Windsor, and then on to stay at the house of some other friends. I had a great evening. Too great, really. Spike drove me into the station the next morning, and the rush hour was not good. When … Continue reading
Toronto – Bloody Words 2014
I really have been inordinately lucky this year. One thing I always wanted to do, when I was young, was to take every opportunity to travel. I was hugely fortunate because my father took us to Austria, Italy and even Kenya. I saw a lot of the world when I was a teenager. Later I … Continue reading
Immigration and Customs – Help!
OK, a brief diversion. I mentioned to a friend on Twitter yesterday that I had a chequered history entering Canada. There was the time I was picked up by the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police to you) and driven off in the back of their cruiser, or the time when I was refused entry … … Continue reading
Tripping again!
Here in Britain, we have a new education leader who has been excoriated in the media and by teachers since he took his job. His name? Michael Gove. Mr Gove is a man who invariably causes fury. He has stopped increasing funding for schools and colleges, he has cut budgets all over, he has presided … Continue reading
The End of an Era
And so we come to the last day of the contract with the Royal Literary Fund. To be fair, it’s not quite the last day, but it’s my last day in the RLF office in Exeter University. The rest of my time will be at home, collating all the data for the RLF for their … Continue reading
New projects!
Every so often a project comes along that intrigues me, and recently I’ve had another one. Ever since I first saw the Arnolfini picture by Van Eyck – Jean Arnolfini and Jeanne Cenani, his wife, by Jan Van Eyck (1434) – which, from memory, was when I found as an illustration inside the Folio edition … Continue reading
Making Movies
It’s been an interesting time just recently, which is why you may have noticed that I’ve been noticeable by my absence. Now that my daughter is a well-established teenager, naturally she has realised that her father is a doddery old twit without the brains he was born with. And he needs controlling and managing.It took … Continue reading
YouTube? I Tube
There are some aspects of a writing career that just get in the way. There is no other way to look at it. When I started out (twenty years ago now, God help us!) the job was easy. An author was supposed to write. As my friend Quintin Jardine likes to remind me: “Writers write … Continue reading
Pens I Have Known – A Review of a Life in Pens
I am madly keen on fountain pens. On my desk right now, I have three Conway Stewarts, three Crosses, one Kaweco and one Cult Pens pen. All of them are regularly used. When I am writing, when I am planning, when I am doodling or plotting, the only pens for me are fountain pens. … Continue reading
YouTube If You Want To
There are times when it seems like there’s no time to sit at the desk and write, and this has been one of those weeks. University was – well, mayhem is a little too polite, I guess. From nine in the morning to four thirty, Monday and Tuesday, I had no time for even a … Continue reading
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