Waitin’ For You

Still back in the early 1980’s, I imagined waiting for a girl arriving on a train to write this one. Back then, the Hull to Birmingham train was a frequent trip for me and Sheffield and Doncaster changes quite usual….. Deni joined me on this one – such a sweet voice to round out the song. The riff is a two string riff that I came up with one day by chance and really liked….. Waitin’ For You was played at several ‘live’ performances at that time and people seemed to enjoy it.

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The War Wolf – Review

It isn’t often that I rave about a book or anything to be honest. Perhaps I need to do it more often? However, I recently took advantage of a Free Kindle offer to download a book called The War Wolf: The Sorrow Song Trilogy Part One (Volume 1) by Peter C. Whitaker. Peter is a fellow Hull man that I somehow met on Facebook in the last year or so who writes too and very well. The book is part one of a trilogy of books called The Sorrow Song Trilogy and all three books cover just a few days and weeks in 1066. I have always enjoyed good historical fiction or perhaps faction especially if the author can really talk the period and Peter can do just that. He

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The Stripper

For many years, I drove everyday – at least once and sometime twice – from The woodlands, TX to the center of Houston. In all of that time, I would listen to the radio and curse that most often, the song played would be never said. I hate that. Anyway, recently, I found out that many of the songs that I enjoyed were by a British band called Bush. Yep- almost all those songs that I itched to know – who? Bush! Strange. There I am in the US and its British music I adore – though I didn’t know it then. It reminds me of a trip I made there for a week and the Partner of our firm took me – somewhat reluctantly – to a strip club.

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I Hated School

There is a lot of talk these days about bullying at school. I just, for example, read a story in my local paper about an actress from Beverley who recounts her experiences of bullying. Was anyone not bullied at school? Looking back, I recall the cruelty of other kids too. We moved from west Hull to Willerby – a far posher place, when I was 9 or 10 and feelt very out of place. I was different too. I wore my heart on my sleeve, I was interested in ghosts, occultism, spirituality and uninterested in sports. I loved music (still do) and followed T.Rex long after that was considered cool. I self taught to play guitar and was always in a band of some sort. Somehow this combination attracted the

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A Journey to the End of the world

I remember one day deciding with a friend that we would explore the very edge of our world. We jumped on our bicycles and set off resolutely in that general direction. After about 15-minutes, we had already entered an entirely new world about which we knew only rumor. Here, there were supposed to be roaming gangs that if they caught you, would carry you off to their secret lairs in the ‘blackgang’. We felt, well, very brave to have gone so far and to be in someone else’s territory. Parking our bikes by the side of the street, we entered some gardens discovering a veritable paradise of willow trees and grass surrounding a small private pond. It was magical and it was someone else’s secret garden as we had hauled

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Medium – From My Haunted Life Too

There was a time growing up when I became quite fascinated by spiritualism. The idea that a person could communicate with the dead—actually see and hear ghosts—was of great interest to me. This was an interest that my mother was actually willing to share with me, and so we ended up taking a couple of trips to a spiritualist church in Hull, England. These sessions were always characterized as demonstrations of clairvoyance, rather than speaking with the dead; but that is exactly what these people did. On our second trip, my dad decided to stay at home, muttering something about it ‘only encouraging weird activity,’ but he was always interested in what had happened at the meetings, of course. He was, I believe, quite right. It did encourage the strange, ghostly

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The Chess Piece (From My Haunted Life Too)

A friend of mine once told me this story on a Halloween many years ago. It chilled me to the bone. Whether it is true or not, I am not sure, although he swore on his mother’s grave that it was. In the late 1970s, the central cemetery in west Hull was a real eyesore. It was overrun with trees, bushes and weeds, and it was used as a place for all sorts of illicit activities. Most people gave it a very wide berth indeed. Many of the graves in the cemetery are Victorian, and they are grandiose monstrosities of a bygone era. It is a pretty damned creepy place in fact. These days, the whole area has been cleaned up, tidied and is actually worthy of a visit. However,

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Conversing With Santa

As a little lad, we lived in west Hull. It was a typical terrace house in a street called Westlands Road. No. 8 to be precise. My Dad added extensions to it here and there so a new kitchen extension and a front porch. The front porch was where the telephone was. Back then, telephones were black and had a handset that sat on a body with a rotary dialer. They made a nice sound when you turned that dialer! Like most little kids I suppose, I was obsessed with the phone. Every chance I got, I was there, in the porch, playing with the phone. One day, I guess I must have dialed just the right number of times a number that truly existed. I recall being a bit amazed

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Medium

There was a time growing up that I became interested in spiritualism. This was an interest my Mother was willing to share and we ended up taking a couple of trips to a spiritualist church in Hull. My Dad stayed home muttering something about ‘encouraging activity’, but was always interested in what had happened. He was, I believe, right. It both encouraged the activity in our house as well as made me more open to it. Attending a spiritualist church as a teenage boy was interesting. The first thing I noticed was that the vast majority of my fellow visitors where female and well over the age of 50. However, the mediums were often younger people I noticed. One evening, it was quite full as the medium was highly thought of

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Hull, High Treason and Scrooge

I grew up in the city of Hull.  It was a grey sort of world back then in Hull in the 60’s and 70’s. The city was a grimy, working-class place replete with unrepaired war damage. Hull was I think the second most bombed city in England and it still showed. More than that, it was a back water. Cut off seemingly from the rest of the country both geographically and culturally. It is funny how you don’t see certain things until you go back to a place but Hull always seemed to be a good 6-months behind in terms of fashion and music back then. I will be honest. I didn’t like it and I resolved to escape from it as soon as possible. In time, I left and put

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