Pubs and clubs have lost comedy to the premier league of stadium filling stars like Kay and Evans. Time to reclaim and save the pub. Karaoke is passé, whist drives a crusty old hat of half eaten memory, dominoes flat on their backs. The surge of quiz nights have been ruined by the roaming swots [...]

The days are growing, the birds are singing and Spring is beckoning. I feel my own spirits bowling the same way. Besides a fruitful and busy business week, this last week has been a week of some personal spiritual awakening. I think it terribly sad this country’s atheist movement is determined to ban prayer from public [...]

I had dinner last week with someone who has kept a diary since he was 17. I simply have a load of spent phones. I recently had the ones spared from landfill rot framed and titled ‘Tired of Talking.’  They have become a talking point. My phones and I are patiently waiting for the first [...]

On Friday evening we drove East to one of the most discreetly located Indian capitals, Curry Corner. You find it where you would expect a late night Spar flogging fags under home wired CCTV, or a chippy belching sweet fat odours across Cheltenham’s Coronation Street terraces. Instead you discover ‘The best curry pole to pole’ [...]

Lasagne, steak and ale pie, local sausages on garlic mash… Would you like vegetables or salad? Chips or new potatoes? Any sauces? Two meals for ten pounds. Specials on the blackboard. It all needs to be special! I am bored. Bored, bored, bored of pub restaurants. So are many others. Fact. People are drinking less. [...]

I have long moaned about the cost of pickled onions. I am a fussy pickled onion cruncher and only eat the best. This year I decided to pickle my own and recently brought a 20kg bag. My plumb tree is laden and so I have decided to also make some jam and chutney. I don’t [...]

Wishing I had worn gloves, I scooped Scruffy off the snow, bearing one arm under his chest and the other under belly. He was surprisingly light at first, and thankfully so, for by the end of my ambulance, his weight was nearly impossible. Although exceptionally fit, tall and lithe, at 12 I was still short [...]

Start. Cold, dark – fox screams still echoing over the hill. Very cold, duvet pulled up close and I return to Mr Bright’s biology class. I was lucky enough to enjoy the tail end of an era when teachers could still be rather eccentric and Mr Bright was one of those. He kept a Boa [...]

Oh Dear Reader, I could write ‘til year end on my childhood and its countless characters, human and animal, but I must stop! I have our story to tell. As you know,  many of the animals I befriended in my innocent years I turned to when we needed their help and I look forward to [...]

My window ajar, the curtain fluttered and in she flew. My dancing soul, nectar of roses, vapour of dew. An alluring light of butterfly flight and a tease of lids to A blinkering start, a surreal giddiness between dare and pillow. Comforts abandoned heavy for excitement light, The dawn rose its song for two lovebirds [...]