We had a rare (genuinely rare) treat at the weekend - a trip to Abbot Hall art gallery in Kendal to see a painting by Claude Monet. The gallery is a lovely place to visit anyway, with a regular exhibition of local artist George Romney's works, links to local notables such as Lady Anne Clifford, [...]
On Saturday we braved the bitter cold (minus 2c, to be precise), wrapped up in our woollies and headed to the Windermere Christmas market. The town held this for the first time last year, and great fun it was too. It was called 'Ja Windermere' in a slightly odd nod to German Christmas markets elsewhere, [...]
I've just set up a brand new Facebook page for 'Got Ghosts?' and to celebrate I'm holding a daft little contest, with one free copy of the book to give away. All you need to do is pop along to the page, have a look at the photo I've posted there and come up with [...]
Last night I took my courage in both hands and went along to Verbalise, an open-mic night at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal. It seemed daft not to. One, they encourage new people to attend and read; two, this one had a Halloween theme; and three, it was only 4 days after I'd had [...]
Yesterday afternoon I trotted along to Windermere library to hear a talk by local author Deborah Swift about her new book, Pleasing Mr Pepys. You may remember that I was hoping to attend the launch for this book a couple of weeks ago, only to be driven back by flash floods. This time, in spite of [...]
I was really looking forward to this weekend. Two of my writer friends have new historical novels out ('The Blood of Kings' by Angela King, and 'Pleasing Mr Pepys' by Deborah Swift), and both had launch parties in the space of three days. First was Angela's, which she held on Thursday at the Quarter Lounge [...]
Last night we went on a musical journey around the world, courtesy of the Lake District summer music festival in general, and Kabantu in particular. Kabantu isn't the latest operating system from Linux, it's a talented five-piece music group which specialises in genre-defying fusion sounds from around the world. They play everything from South African [...]
