Season's Reading

At this time of year, I always curl up with one of my favorite little books.

Meditating in Le Brooklyn

The view from my room in Brooklyn

Brooklyn. It's a great hood, in a great city. It's New York, baby. 

Russians Reading My Blog

There's a lot of Russians reading my blog, folks.

Five Years in the USA

 Hip hip hooray, it's five years living in the USA! 

My Hack Role Models

I remember an inebriated hack giving me some lofty advice about working for the Daily Telegraph in the summer of 1998. "See here," he said, "you can't burst into the office like you're Charles Bronson or Bruce Willis." The poor deluded fool. I pointed out to the Oxford man that Charles Bronson had played a tough guy reporter in two films of low merit (St. Ives in 1976 and Messenger of Death in 1988). 

The Male Trailing Spouse and Mrs. Yates

 

"Licensed to Spill" claims the banner under the title of this blog. Well, I'd best spill the beans about me and Sally Yates, the gorgeous, pouting, former Acting Attorney General of the USA.

NRA 2017 in Atlanta

And on the seventh day God finished his work and joined the NRA...

Last Orders for Poetry in Liverpool

The Old Man is flanked by The Scaffold - Roger McGough, Mike McGear (Paul McCartney's brother) and John Gorman - with Andy Roberts, current Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Adrian Henri to the front in Kirklands Wine Bar, 1977.

Four Weeks In A Banana Republic

Dad in 1973

Forty odd years ago in Liverpool, aged seven and snot nosed in short trousers, I asked my late Father why he'd left the USA to go and live in the United Kingdom. This was 1977 and Dad had been living in merry England for some years. Why in Sam Hill did he move from New England to Old? What was wrong with America, why did he leave? With a sardonic twinkle in his bourbon eyes, he growled down at his Number Two son, "Because my country had been taken over by sissies. That's why!"

The Republic of Trump

Achtung Schweinehund! For you ze democracy is over!