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If you look in Amazon books for Colin Taylor, you will find over a dozen of us with the same name. There are even more with middle initials and yet more with complete middle names. Taylor is incredibly common. My parents had long names and decided that my two brothers and I would have short […]

The first glimmerings of Eden began ages ago, when I read an article about Snowball Earth. Intrigued, I found that there was evidence that the Earth was once one big snowball of frozen ice with glaciers in the south of Africa. Amazing! Later, there was a BBC Horizon programme about it. Then I found a […]

Well, yes, it’s dishwasher. A spoonerism. According to dictionary definitions William Archibald Spooner, a Victorian clergyman, was of a nervous disposition, but often had to speak to audiences. He frequently transposed the first letters of words and spoonerism entered the language around 1900. I must have been loading or emptying the dishwasher and as often […]

A long time ago, when my children were young, Graham was about seven and Helen four, my wife, Susanne, and I took them on a family holiday to Northumberland. We camped there in our trailer tent for two weeks. It was sunny mostly with just a little rain. There were old castles to explore, sandy […]

I’m updating and rewriting The Wishdosher. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but have put it off whilst writing other stories. Procrastination is often a part of a writer’s life and I find that it creeps into my writing life quite often. Checking emails, Facebook posts and doing research online is much […]

Since February, I am Chair of Brentwood Writers’ Circle…again. I know, it’s short for chairman, but we don’t use that anymore because it’s sexist so most people now shorten it to chair Only, when I say I’m chair, to myself, that’s not what pops into my mind. Perhaps it’s because I’m being childlike, childish, my […]