Like many with a penchant for putting pen to paper, I often use artistic license in my prose. Fictional elements included aimed at incorporating humour, or merely to enhance the readworthiness of a otherwise dull anecdote. Additions required when GJ Strachan’s cascading of his monochrome lifestyle needs a dash of colour. It’s fair to say, as with numerous individuals, my real existence isn’t interesting enough to sustain a purely factual […]
There’s few things that rankle with a Yorkshireman more than defeat by sports teams representing the House of Lancaster. Witnessing Lancastrian ‘troops’ returning west over the Pennine Hills with a battle victory lodges in their trachea like a carelessly swallowed wish bone. Yesterday evening was a perfect example of this disenchantment by players and supporters of the white rose county’s cricket team. Despair manifesting from the sight of seeing Lancashire […]
Yesterday afternoon, as my wife and me slowly ambled up Calverley Street towards our destination of Leeds Museum, she pointed out this was her inaugural tour of the building housing our city’s historical artefacts. “It’s not mine. I’ve never been before!” I joked weakly. She smiled disingenuously, called me an idiot for what definitely wasn’t the inaugural time, meanwhile continuing uphill towards the former Mechanical Institute building. A few years back […]
I had a odyssey over to Cheshire yesterday to retrieve my mother from my sister Helen’s home – A locale where she’d been residing for a week or so. From my understanding, mum’s mission to the other side of the Pennines was to stop our Helen and husband Steve from eating flavoursome cuisine, whine about the music they listen to on BBC Radio 6, and to sully their TV screens […]
“……When you meet a gent paying all kinds of rent For a flat that could flatten the Taj Mahal. Call it sad, call it funny. But it’s better than even money That the guy’s only doing it for some doll……” Song lyrics composed by American songwriter Frank Loesser in his eponymous refrain from the musical Guy & Dolls, which premiered on Broadway in 1950. In the catchy strain two of […]
John Maxwell Edmonds won’t be too familiar a name to most people. Despite this, some of the English classicist’s compositions will be instantly recognisable to millions around the world. In particular around this time of year, when we remember our fallen in worldwide services of remembrance. The Stroud born poet is celebrated for his moving and thought provoking epitaphs. Amongst his more famous work he is attributed with the widely […]
The world gave a huge sigh of relief 55 years today when an agreement to resolve the Cuban missile crisis was reached by the USA and the Soviet Union. A historic accord that averted the immediate threat of nuclear war between the two superpowers and an inevitable mass loss of life globally. The crisis started a fortnight earlier when a United States U2 reconnaissance plane spotted the existence of Soviet missiles on Cuban soil. […]
