Stories from the City

I have a piece on crime and Liverpool in Stories from the City, a collection of new writing about the city: past, present and future. My piece looks a the differences between gangsters and legitimate business and speculates about the causes of criminality in Liverpool.
Written, designed, edited and produced locally and independently, Stories from the [...]

Duty on Alcohol is a Blunt Instrument

So the government says it wants to reduce binge drinking because it is a cause of ill-health, violence, and it costs a fortune in policing. You can’t really argue with that. But all they have is alcohol duty to keep pushing the price up. And the effect of that is that pubs are closing at [...]

Cains Still Not on Amazon.co.uk: Try Here Instead

The list of people receiving order cancellations from Amazon is growing so I’m putting together a collection of alternative places where you can pre-order Cains: The Story of Liverpool in a Pint, which will be with us very soon now. Many thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered the book.
Amazon (UK) is giving you a link [...]

Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?

Tom Waits. A great song. Photography by Walker Evans, among others. Perfect.

via.

Extreme Beer

This week’s New Yorker magazine has a long and fascinating piece by Burkhard Bilger about what it calls ‘extreme beer’. This seems to be defined as beer that requires unusual and ‘extreme’ materials and equipment, or which is at the upper limits of alcohol content, or contains unusual ingredients. What is really compelling about the [...]

Shedworking Issue 16

Last week the Shedworking blog announced the third birthday edition of its free e-magazine, The Shed. It’s always an enjoyable read and this edition has a delightful piece on fictional sheds:
Not all well known garden offices and shedworking atmospheres are actually real. Naturally, sheds feature heavily in many children’s stories - in my case Jennings’ [...]

The Inheritors

The New Scientist reports that Neanderthals may have been driven to extinction by modern humans throwing rocks and spears. Apparently the fossilised shoulder bones of ancient humans show similar signs of wear as those of modern-day baseball players. Who’d have thought it? Well, William Golding actually, in his novel The Inheritors (1955) which is told [...]

White Whales and Wooden Ships

There is a great story over at Wired about the whaling ship Essex, which in 1820 was rammed and sunk by a Sperm Whale somewhere in the Pacific. This is the story that partly inspired Melville to write Moby Dick a book everyone should read at least once. Melville of course was a seaman on [...]

Imperial Good Companion Model T

As every four year-old knows, up there in the loft space, in the dark underneath the tiles, hiding in the shadows, are monsters. Monsters you couldn’t imagine in a lifetime of bad dreams. Monsters just waiting to come down into the light and terrorize your daydreams as well.
I have only a vague idea where this [...]

Continuing Education Courses in Liverpool

If you’re based near Liverpool and have an interest in reading and books you might like to take a look at the Continuing Education catalogue at Liverpool University. These courses have a good friendly atmosphere about them and are often quirky and interesting. There are still spaces left on a couple of one day only [...]

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