More than a month since I received the Covid vaccine. I notice, as we go for local walks, that people who stroll past us seem more relaxed than they have been for over a year. Few people, at least in this locality, wear masks any more. Add to that the fact that for the first […]
Category Archives: Writing about…
I switched on Bloodlands last night because I like watching James Nesbitt, though I don`t always love police dramas. To my shock, or rather not to my shock, but to my sadly lack of shock – here again was what I call that ubiquitous plot motif. Is it really a truth universally acknowledged that a […]
Having ideas is easy. Putting them into practice is less so. Recently I had a serious conversation with someone who had known several other people who had had M E. Even more than many of the supportive friends and relations who have all, in recent years been `converts` to the acceptance of the condition as […]
Attended a lovely zoom yesterday. Presented by the journal Jewish Renaissance, Executive Director Aviva Dautch chaired the evening which was to promote the current issue of the journal, and then to celebrate the publication in English of a hitherto undiscovered story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Editor Rebecca Taylor and Aviva Dautch make a dynamic team, […]
This last year I have been having regular skype meetings with my sisters in Israel. Judith lives on a moshav, a few kilometres from the border with Gaza. Naomi lives in Jerusalem, in the same block of flats, on the same floor in fact that our late parents lived – our father until his death […]
Two shadows seem to have been lifted this week. Donald Trump has left Washington and gone back to Florida, and Jo Biden and Kamala Harris do not send me into a state of discomfort, fear, trembling, the way Trump did. I have actually always been afraid of the glitzy inauguration of American presidents. I think […]
Could Ten Letters be a good title for my new novel? It does feature ten letters, so perhaps yes. I started it on October 2nd and ran with it, until stopped in my tracks by two things. One, the interest of previously mentioned small independent publisher in my story collection. The other? The nice news […]
I have read Astral Travel, by Elizabeth Baines. To say I enjoyed it would not be quite accurate, as it is a serious account of the narrator`s abusive childhood. One of those accounts where I say to myself – if only half of these awful stories are true, it`s evident that these are sad and […]
The weeks go by, whether or not we are in lockdown, or a tier or whatever. Some aspects of the general slowdown of our lives have actually left me feeling pretty relaxed. In recent weeks I have embarked on a new novel, and to date it is going well. The characters are clear and known […]
I binge-watched the last two episodes of Mike Bartlett`s `Life` at the weekend. After it was over felt as if I had been out for a huge meal, and needed hours in which to digest what I had absorbed. 4 flats in a big old house, somewhere like Walley Range, Manchester. A grieving widower, played […]