Scene – Outside a public house on Low Fell, Gateshead in 1982. A winter’s night when….. Actually, I’ll leave it to the sinister voice of Vincent Price to paint the picture…… “Darkness falls the land. The midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorise the neighbourhood. Although you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver. But no mere mortal can resist a […]
I was a few months short of my fourth birthday when The Beatles released their progressive pop offering Penny Lane. A song for which, even with naivety consequential from my then pre-school vantage point, I possessed a great fondness – An affinity which has remained with me for the next half century. Whenever I hear the song, I’m transported back to a monochrome*** time of listening to the Fab Four’s […]
I’m sitting having lunch alfresco as I quill this quixotic qualitied chronicle. A mushroom and ham pizza, along with a refreshing cider shandy with ice the accomplices to my crime against literature. Unlike an egg, you can’t beat an mushroom and ham pizza – A topping invented by god because he found a meat feast too filling, and the jalapeno spicy hot version gave him terrible heartburn. A fact worth […]
After a hectic few weeks of adventuring by train to gigs, historic cities, international cricket games, and basking in the stunning Lakeland scenery, I’m happy to report I’ve quieter few days ahead. Writing, along with the maintenance of two family gardens thus far being my only scheduled activities for this week. I’m unsure as to why the weekend’s exertions, during a break with mates, in the Lake District have rendered […]
One of the pages within my website menu is Cricketing Yarns. A literary portal containing a series of partly fictional and unreliable tales from my club cricketing career. Although now retired, I played club cricket in Gateshead, Buckinghamshire and Leeds for over 30 years. An odyssey that started when one of my neighbours (Brian Dixon) introduced me to Gateshead Fell cricket club. A Durham Senior League outfit where I’d go […]
Monday 30th April – The moribund month is at it’s dusk – In a few hours April will take a terminal breath, passing over the 2018 calendar baton to May. According to a lad with whom I attended Heathfield Senior High School in the late 1970’s, the month of May was named after his great aunt from Wallsend……. As his aunt was called Geraldine not May, and he was a […]
Sunday 22nd April – This lunchtime I partook in a pre-train journey beer with my brother Ian at Newcastle Central station. A jovial hour in which we reminisced about our existential escapades prior to me leaving the north east of England around 31 years ago. Our knockabout banter including tales of our kid’s ‘eventful’ driving lessons and subsequent tests. As part of this, he spoke of paternal mentoring at the […]
