Category: Vicissitudes of Life

Who’s the old bloke in the image below? Oh it’s me. This was taken during my reading at the Gunmakers Arms in Birmingham on Thursday, 25th January, during the pub’s Burns’ Night celebration. I read a Scottish piece, about going home to Ecclefechan during the 1959s and 1960s. There were several readers taking part during…… Continue reading Burns’ Night: 25th January 2018

My second novel, Finding Sarah, was self-published in January 2018. It tells the story of the passionate love affair between Max and Sarah and its consequences. A click or tap on the image of the cover will take you to the book’s page on Amazon UK.

The Three Bells Striking north from the M62 took us through several small towns and villages along the edge of the Pennines. Stone Chair, Queensbury, Mountain, Denholme, and the wonderfully named Flappit Spring pass by as darkness greeted our approach to Haworth in Yorkshire. The streets in the upper part of the town are narrow:…… Continue reading The Three Bells

The newly-edited, second edition of my first novel is available as an ebook from Amazon here and as a paperback book here. A huge thanks go to Pippa Lobban for her brilliant cover design: this can be seen below. Please feel free to post an honest review of Visions of Whereafter on its Amazon book page. There is a button…… Continue reading Visions of Whereafter

I find myself in reflective mood while writing this post. This is partly because, earlier in the year, in January to be more precise, I passed a psychological and biblical milestone: my 70th birthday. If I remember my RE studies at boarding school correctly, there is mention of three score years and ten somewhere in…… Continue reading Three Score Years and Ten

I’ve known for quite some time that my grandfather, David Muir, fought in the First World War. He was wounded and captured on the first day of the Battle of Loos, on 25th September 1915, his very first day of action in the war. He spent the remainder of the war as a POW. It…… Continue reading Dead Man’s Penny

As in Part One, I’ve summarised a number of stories without comment. From the Guardian website in December last year. Heinrich Steinmeyer left £384,000 in his will to the people of the village of Conrie in Perthshire, Scotland. Steinmeyer was captured in France in 1944 and was detained in a POW camp near Conrie until…… Continue reading Good News: Part Two

Wow, just over 1800 visits to the page of my most recent blog! Thank you for your interest and support. This page count for a blog post is a record for me. ——————– For this blog, I thought that perhaps some good news stories might warm your hearts and lift your spirits. I have tried…… Continue reading And Now For Some Good News

A recent email and a Christmas card from two of my regular readers reminded me that there has been something of a hiatus: I haven’t posted here for over two months. It was very gratifying to be asked: “when will there be another blog?” Well, here it is. It is about a ballet that is…… Continue reading The Nutcracker

Over the past three or four decades, my wife (aka A) and I have walked about a dozen long-distance trails in England and Wales, one in Scotland (with P and B) and one in Ireland. The question that we are often asked is: “What do you do with your car?” For this first blog post…… Continue reading “What do you do with your car?”