During my fledgling years my main love was association football, as an old Pathe news commentator may’ve dubbed the game in his authoritative BBC English tones. In particular, I was enamoured by the all conquering 1960s/70s Leeds United teams managed by Don Revie. Accomplished exponents of a game that led to a boyhood pipe dream of one day playing for the team representing my West Yorkshire place of birth. This unconditional […]
A few days back I relayed recollections from my young childhood. While I mulled over a topic for today’s prose my mother (whose house I’m currently residing in suggested I journal further memories from the same era……….. Only funny ones this time. To be honest, what she really said “Was it you who ate that last Kit Kat, Gary?”. However, deeming there wasn’t much mileage in a narrative about Kit Kats […]
Six weeks ago I disclosed, via at least one literary pastiche, that I’d joined a local community choir. A move I’d taken after witnessing the collective joy on singers faces mid-refrain, as they tunefully accompanied my Marie Curie collection on Garforth Main Street. The groups attendance part of organised entertainment arranged for the massed crowds eagerly awaiting the arrival of Tour De Yorkshire cyclists. The audience predominantly exhibiting as much pleasure […]
The journey started on Wednesday 29th April 1970 when I was seven summers old. On jumping out of bed that particular morning my mood reflected the bright sunshine fulgently radiating through open drapes into my easterly facing bedroom. On leaving my bed chamber, I undertook my habitual sideways run down the stairs of my home in Low Fell, Gateshead. A sojourn that continued through the hall and living room, eventually […]
Yours truly is sitting on the bed in casa Strachan’s spare room as I commence this monologue. My current domain, the smallest of the three upstairs chambers gracing my humble abode, which doubles as a man cave and occasional panic room. Its use as a panic room ordinarily manifests from a need to hide after forgetting to record cable TV shows for my wife. Either that or from incurring her wrath […]
I learned many useful life lessons as a child growing up in Low Fell, Gateshead. Amongst them was when it came to playing table football games my brother Ian was a flaming cheat. Our kid will have his own version of these events, but will never convince me he flicked the small plastic player to ‘kick’ the giant football, which was clearly stipulated within the rules of the game. Instead […]
It’s Tuesday morning and GJ Strachan is suffering from a severe case of writers block. Annoyingly, the ordinarily creative segment of my brain currently bereft of an inspirational epiphany or notion. Even the memories of my Gateshead childhood, which have proved so fertile in the past week, thus far unable to produce a narrative topic That being said, I won’t panic at the current paucity of ideas for populating the […]
