Category craic

Hi folks. I hope you and those you care about are all well, and keeping a safe distance from Covid-19. These are strange times we’re living in, and I’ve been doing my best to make sense of it (and keep…

Life is currently a series of small steps forward and knockbacks, but then isn’t it always? Like millions of other self-employed people I’ve seen my income dry up at a stroke as the coronavirus lockdown began, although bits and pieces…

In those heady, innocent days before pandemics and lockdowns were a thing, and we each had all the toilet roll we wanted, I’d got today down in my diary for the launch of my latest book. And it was going…

You’d think by now I’d have got the hang of the old self-promotion lark, wouldn’t you? But the truth is that it makes my bloody toes curl. I love writing, love the process of creating a story or a poem…

Yesterday I took the ‘One Ring To Bind Them’ exhibition to Darlaston Town Hall and threw open the doors. Thanks to everyone who came along to have a gander, and stayed to enjoy the wrestling showcases throughout the afternoon. You…

If you find yourself wandering through Wolverhampton over the next couple of weeks, and have ten minutes to spare, nip into the Central Library, head upstairs, and take a look at the ‘One Ring to Bind Them’ exhibition. It’s a…

It’s been a busy old start to 2020. January was traditionally – for me, anyway – a month where nothing much happened and I lived as frugally as possible while waiting for the work to come in. Not now, I…

It had been a good few months since I found time to write a poem – lots of reasons for that, too long-winded to go into on a Sunday morning – but as I tried to make sense of the…

Sometimes – when you’re juggling the work/life balance, chasing commissions, hunting for gigs, and trying to stay on top of admin on the one hand and mushrooming slatternliness on the other – sometimes actual writing, the very thing you’re passionate…

One rainy midweek morning earlier this summer, I made my way to the Jewellery Quarter train station in Birmingham, and met up with a cameraman. We made a recording of me reading my poem Pride of Place, and I got…

It’s been over six weeks since I last posted a blog here. Yikes. Partly that’s because I’ve been slaving away with my fellow pandemonialists on the script of a show about Black Country humour – Finding Our Funny Roots is…

It seems an age ago already, but last week I was up in Edinburgh, visiting the Fringe with my fellow pandemonialists Dave Pitt and Emma Purshouse. We were there for two reasons: to do a gig for the Loud Poets,…