Little Blue and Green Men
I had a good conversation by phone last night with my Mother. She was keen to know more about my new book – My Haunted Life – and it prompted a discussion of some of the events described in the book and in some articles on this blog. I thought I would pass them along because, if nothing else, they are intriguing. In the advertising for the book, I claim that one of my first memories is of a little blue man jumping out of my mirror, shooting me, and then leaping from my bedroom window. My mother remembers this very well but she says it was a little green man not blue! She told me that she and Dad had more or less just gone to bed when they
Read More »Bonfire Night
The last Bonfire night I attended must now be what – 1991? Tonight, all across the UK, bonfires will be set, effigies burned and fireworks set off. People will have BBQ food perhaps or a special dinner. Families and friends will be together and hopefully, fun will be had by everyone. But not here. Not in Brno. Instead, I will be thinking back as I usually do to the bonfire nights of my past. The ones that I recall most vividly were those on the damp banks of the River Humber with the local camping club. It would be the last outing of the year and the caravan would be hitched and the tents packed for a short haul down the M62 towards Goole. There, somewhere in the countryside –
Read More »New Book Trailer
So last night I had a crack at making a video trailer for my new book – My Haunted Life – and I came up with this…. Let me know what you think….. The book is available on Kindle and in paperback formats. Right now the Kindle version is just 99 cents – but not for much longer!
Read More »Memories
Hazy and utterly imperfect I still see your amazing face But cannot recall your name So many details have escaped me Become just disjointed pictures Jumping from frame to frame Looking back more often now Is it something about getting older? Treasuring such moments Like an old movie rerun In that grainy black n white Like a regressive hypnosis Memories often have a quality Unreal and sort of beyond the veil Difficult to determine between Whether real or just wishful thinking Ethereal like some whispy gossamer Or an insidious repeating dream Memories Pictures of a lifetime Visionaries A shifting paradigm
Read More »An Autumn walk Through Brno
As some of you know, I live in Brno. Brno is a city in the south of the Czech Republic, and it is closer to Vienna and Bratislava than it is to Prague. It is a city of more than 350,000 and that makes it a little bigger than my hometown of Hull, England, but not by much. I find that surprising really as, while Hull has the feel of a grimy, northern working class city, Brno is more like a picturesque, but industrial village. Brno feels smaller, more compact and is simply blessed by beautiful surroundings and topography. Where Hull is endlessly flat, stretching into the plains of Holderness, Brno is hilly. While Hull is made up of long streets of Victorian houses all joined together in
Read More »The Halloween That Wasn’t!
I lived in Houston, TX for nigh on 20-years and on Halloween, the doorbell would not stop ringing. Little kids by the dozen all dressed up roaming the streets with their parents collecting candy. When my boys were little, I would accompany them around all the local streets and I really enjoyed seeing how Texans celebrated Halloween. Decorations, candy, make up, fancy dress, they do it right. Some of the yard decorations were simply spectacular too. I will be honest and say that some years being the cranky sod I am, by the 50th ring of the doorbell and 100th listening to ‘TRICK OR TREAT,” I had sometimes had enough. There were times when I opened the door and said “Trick”. The kids looked confused by this as no one
Read More »My Haunted Life – Paperback
My Haunted Life – my new book is now available in paperback format as well as Kindle. My childhood was a strange one. One of my first memories is of a little, blue man who emerged out of a mirror in my bedroom, shot me with a toy gun and then jumped out of the window into the backyard below. You might perhaps think that I imagined it, except for the fact that my parents actually heard the gunshot! This book is a collection of events that happened to me. All are strange and all are true. When people say that “fact is stranger than fiction”– they weren’t joking. It is a compendium of stories that really happened to me and those around me; some are creepy and others just
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