Southport

The Stuart Maconie book "The Pie At Night"  is now on the North West Coast and apparently the author lived in Southport at the same time I did. He remarks about the desert between Southport and the Sea before moving to Blackpool and the Tower and finally Bispham for fish and chips with wine.

I am also reading "Carol" by Patricia Highsmith, a recommendation from my work LGBT+ book club, so I will have two on the go, and that is not a bad thing.

He is also an excellent writer and DJ and worth checking out in print or on the BBC. 

I recently discovered that my American Amazon Author page has a feed from this blog which you can see here. It only shows on the .com site but not on others. C'est La Vie.

The music is "Up The Pool" by Jethro Tull

Mike Singleton - Vocal Stories

I am not sure if you are aware of my writing on Vocal but these are a few of my stories if you would like to sample them:

1. Barter Books - An Amazing Bookshop In A Railway Station In Alnwick
2. The Plagiaristic Poetry Series - Poems Taken From Random-Themed Lines
3. Another Raven - A Take On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven"
4. The Cleaner - An Autism-Focused Christmas Special
5. An Owl In A Towel - A Beautiful Book by Lesley and Cheryl
6. Three Reasons Why I Love Settle - Scaleber Force, The Hoffman Kiln and Castlebergh Crag
7. The Accidental Book - Helping a Great Vocal Friend Resulted In Me Publishing My First Book
8. Call Me Les - A Great Friend and An Amazing Writer and this is her Instagram

How To Start Christmas Day

As a kid Christmas Day started for us at 1 minute past midnight on Christmas Eve, by that time Santa had left some small presents at the bottom of our bed, though we couldn't go down until much later, like when it was light but there were things to eat and play with and by that time mum and dad had gone to bed and didn't complain about us having lights on at night.

I remember when I was living in Southport (and working at Littlewoods in Liverpool) the train line ran back and forth from Southport to Liverpool Central Station. My friend Jim had been out for a few drinks and left for home at 2 pm as they had visitors coming at 5 (it was a half hour journey). He fell asleep. ..... When he woke he was disorientated and then realised he was back in Central Station, so thought he would just just wait for the train to head back to Southport. He waited, and waited, and waited and then a uniformed train   person came down the carriage and Jim asked what time the train was leaving. The guy looked surprised and said "It isn't mate, the trains stopped running half an hour ago" . Jim looked at his watch, it was 11:30pm , he was twenty miles from home on Christmas Eve, five and half hours late for his guest, and this was way way before mobil phones. I never found out what the aftermath was..

Roll forward a bit further and Juliet and Kirsty have graduated from Duplo to Lego and I have been out for Christmas drinks so am not exactly the mot coherent and focussed and then remember I have two Lego Constructions to put together one was definitely a castle and the other maybe a Space Station. This was a very daunting task, but I did manage to complete it, but the lesson was don't drink and do Lego.

Today as I am so old I tend to wake up at odd times and today was no exception, but I thought well I can do a blog post and then go back to bed, there's no pressure , and the obly thing I need to do is check on my neighbour's fish. It's dtill dark and windy out (as it should be at 5:30 am on Christmas Morning) and there are no signs of a White Christmas (although it did rain a bit yesterday evening).

So these are a few tales of how Christmas has been for me previously, and I hope your Christmas turns out to be absolutely perfect.

My #SuddenlyItsChristmas moment is going to be the greatest Christmas song of all time "A Fairy Tale of New York" by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, despite the latest outrage about the lyrics (see here), it's about two flawed people who are maybe not the Christmas paragons of virtue you might expect. I would never use those words as insults and sure all MY gay friends love the song , sing ALL the words and don't take offence because it's a self contained story, and to be quite honest it's probably nothing more than a convenient rhyme in the song (and often poetry does rhyme)

Anyway have a brilliant day

Sleep Is Good .. Being Awake Is Better

Although sleep is good, it enables your body and mind to recuperate and repair itself, but I do prefer being awake and able to do things. I know I should be in bed but thought I would just write a short post on this.

In John Cooper Clarke's "Beasley Street" , his very dark masterpiece , he describes sleep as "a sneak preview of death" which is a chilling assessment of what is really a natural function. Some animals sleep all winter, and I am sure some humans would like to do that as well.

Rest is good but activity is better. We do have so many sedentary pastimes such as watching TV or someone else do something. Reading at least exercises the mind as does writing. I am now sitting typing at a keyboard and a lot of my working day is taken up in a similar way. I do get up and walk around so I am not going to atrophy at my desk, but feel that is often frowned on by some people.

Tonight I've just read of Chuck Berry's passing , he was 90 and had a good life although he did some bad things and definitely in the 50s and 60s was royally screwed over by the white establishment. I saw him once at Southport Floral Hall, queued for tickets and found out everyone else in the queue was queuing for Gilbert O' Sullivan tickets. A sad loss from a true American poet, the words to his songs stand on their own.

Anyway that gives me an excuse to include a Chuck Berry song "No Money Down" for your delectation from the film "Hail Hail, Rock'n'Roll" , and now I will go to my bed and sleep. I have fourteen thousand steps to do tomorrow.

Sleep well my wonderful friends.