A trumpeter is serenading me with an instrumental version of Frosty the Snowman as I commence this literary offering. To clarify, the guy isn’t just serenading me in the front room of chez Strachan senior. He’s part of a quartet entertaining the massive queue of kids/parents below the mezzanine which bears the coffee shop where I’m plying my penmanship. The group of four dressed in fancy dress, accomplished musicians playing […]
I woke this morning relieved to find yesterday’s unforgivingly icy breeze had abated. This glacial wind rendering my body heat as frigorific as temperatures experienced during 1980’s nights out on Newcastle’s Quayside and Bigg Market. A deeply uncomfortable coldness not abetted by being bereft of a coat, even in sub-zero temperatures. Sartorial stupidity that ensured that most Friday nights I’d be baltic in the Baltic (a pub on the city’s Quayside […]
Living back in the matriarchal abode has many challenges, one of which the regression back nearly half a century to experiencing admonishment for actions my mother finds irritating. This includes the incessant tapping of my fingers on the kitchen table, bad table manners and the increasing use of curse words, which in recent months have habitually entered my conversation. Maggie (the family matriarch) is of the opinion that use of […]
There’s an engineer due this afternoon. His mission, should he choose to accept it, to repair my mum’s gas fire which has refused to ignite since last Friday. Frustratingly, I tried a variety of unsuccessful strategies to remedy the problem, including exclaiming irritable cries of “Work you useless piece of s***e!” However, this approach failed to bear fruit, or indeed flames. Likewise, a less confrontational approach of engaging arbitration and conciliation […]
It’s Tuesday and I’m still afflicted by the catarrh laden cough I penned about in Sunday’s literary offering, Untuned Catarrh. A fact leading to my disenchantment growing ever stronger, as I’m still not able to get through the night without regularly waking myself by coughing up phlegm. Taking into account the overnight capriciousness of my middle-aged bladder, it’s fair to say my current sleep pattern is pretty erratic. This morning, on […]
Along with millions worldwide, I observed a two minute silence, marking one hundred and one years since guns fell silent in WWI. The anniversary of an armistice between the Allied countries and Germany – Ending a four year war which saw around 40 million military and civilian casualties. I wasn’t sure which surprised me more, learning of the sheer scale of human slaughter during the Great War, or the fact […]
Today, I’ve had another venture west across the Pennine Hills, my third or fourth visit to the north west in a month. This time to pick my mum Maggie up from my sister Helen’s home in Macclesfield, where she’d spent a few days with her youngest offspring. A visit including mater’s attendance at a performance by the Macclesfield choir who count among its throng the sibling ten years my junior. […]
