Ok, so this is weird. I don’t like cricket (there’s your earworm sorted for today, elderly 10cc fans). I don’t like autobiographies. I have very little knowledge of the music of The Maccabees, and I’m…
We’ve had a lot of fun (and more fun than we thought we’d have) recording our podcast – the hornily titled I’d Love To Turn You On – in the recent pandemically charged months and…
Like all bookish, film, tv and box-set-loving, literary, narrative bores and writer-types, I am very interested in Joseph Campbell’s mythic structure the hero’s journey, or monomyth, as it sometimes goes (a word borrowed from James…
In early summer 2005, following the unexpected minor success of a first full-length play, I was invited to a place called Peaberries that specialised in selling big messy sandwiches that you ended up wearing, to…
Today marks a year since my dear old mum died. I write this not for sympathy, for I have had plenty and it’s been appreciated, but to mark the occasion in a simple and straightforward…
Life is like a broken record right now, right? Doing basic things, like brushing your teeth, getting dressed, cooking good food, washing the pots, talking with civility to other people in the house and going…
Disjointed notes from a Tier 3 north east coastal town. 2020 has been a challenging, clusterfuck of a year for everyone. If we’d had the vision to predict what this year had in store on…
There was a time, many moons ago, when I wrote a blog entry each and every day. It was mostly during my heady days at the local newspaper when, if one was seen typing furiously,…
The £1.57bn ‘rescue package’ (as it was described by Chancellor Rishi Sunak) announced by the government clearly offers some hope to arts organisations, venues and institutions, including those in Hull, who were facing a rapid…
There seemed to be a large, and somewhat banging, gathering of people last night somewhere behind the house. And who can blame them? Seeing other people is important for mental health reasons and, judging by…