If you'll pardon the pun, I'm a sucker for vampires. So when I saw Sky were doing a series based on Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches books, I was intrigued. The books themselves seem to have passed me by; I'd heard of them but never read any of them, and I'm not sure why. [...]
The local civic society has been busy in Grange-over-Sands, putting up lots of blue plaques to explain various bits of the town's history and/or interesting buildings. There's one for the church, another for the municipal clock tower, and also several celebrating more obscure nooks and crannies. One of these announces that a detached, relatively old-looking [...]
After a weekend when both of us had to put in a fair bit of work, we took this morning off and headed for the small "seaside" town of Grange-over-Sands, about twenty miles south. I use seaside in quotes because it's on the shores of Morecambe Bay rather than the actual coast, and also because [...]
A whole year has whizzed by since the last set of Heritage Open Days and suddenly they're on us again. This year it's better than ever since the event lasts for two weekends rather than one, with the same fascinating mix of history and culture to explore. We're whizzing about ourselves at the moment and [...]
Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal is perhaps one of the town's best kept secrets. It nestles down a side alley, past a car park, on the edge of the river next to the church, but hidden away behind its own original stable block, now the Museum of Lakeland Life and Industry. But if you [...]
Dashing in to say that my new 75-word story Things That Go Bump is up at specialist flash fiction website Paragraph Planet today. It's a flippant little piece about ghosts, dead fish, and things that aren't quite as they seem. Do go and check it out - and I hope you have as much [...]
We're often told that writing can be a lonely business and it is: I can spend hours sitting in front of my computer in the tiny space I call a study, plotting, scribbling or typing on my latest work. Sometimes the only contact I have all day is chatting to people online, so it made [...]
