books
24th March, 2018 Sometimes you have to move away from a place to truly realise that it’s Home. After a winter of researching and writing dark fictional tales in The Peak District, I’ve been back in Devon for a couple of weeks and, despite what for the South
1600s
All my life I have been prone, in a mild way, to headstrong, impulsive behaviour. I stand by this strand of my personality, since it has often worked out pretty well for me, and also because I’m a big fan of mistakes and view a life without them as
catshark
I’ve never been to my dad’s local swimming pool in Nottinghamshire, but the cast of characters who populate the male changing rooms there for the early swim on a weekday are so familiar to me now they almost seem like old friends. There’s Pat, a retired mining
cats
I always enjoy going to car boot sales with my mum but, because I don’t have her amazing vision, my experience at them often ends up tarred by the brush of anticlimax. When I arrive at a boot sale, full of foolish hope, what I inevitably see is an
countryside
“What’s this?” I asked my dad. He’d just walked into the living room with several canvases under his arm. On top of the pile was a watercolour painting featuring Winnie The Pooh and Piglet walking through a dark underpass hand-in-hand while three somewhat grotesque, mean-faced men in trenchcoats
close encounters of the furred kind
There had been quite a bit of speculation amongst my dad’s mates at swimming concerning when his black toenail would fall off. Looking at how precariously it was hanging there on their last swim before Christmas, his friends Pat and Malcolm suggested that today could be the big day.
dad
My late paternal granddad Ted was an almost constantly grinning man with a moustache, glasses, and a scar running across the entirely bald dome of his head. Right from when I was very small, I’d known that he’d been injured in World War II, but it wasn'
countryside
Read more about my dad.
berry pomeroy
My latest Guardian column.
dad
Was on the phone to my dad the other day. He told me a good story about a log so I thought I'd transcribe it. (My dad is 65.)
cats
A column for The Guardian.
countryside
My latest 21st Century Yokel column for The Guardian.