More than Writers

  We recently invested in a bread maker.    It wasn’t something that we had planned on getting, as they always seemed to me to be quite an old fashioned, dated gadget, which would probably sit out on the worktop for about a week, and then end up in the loft, as they seemed to be so big and bulky.    And why were so many for sale, used once, or unused and still in their boxes  The reason why we decided to get one is because I was feeling uncomfortable after eating bread and I seemed to have developed an allergy to it, which I have never had in the past, and I love bread so much, so what is going into the bread we eat today?  Also, I noticed that a loaf of bread that I bought from a popular supermarket, wasn’t going off, even though it had been left out for over a week. I did a little experiment and left the bread out on the worktop for almost four weeks, and it still looked as good as the day we bought it, and felt soft and fresh. It obviously wasn’t, a...

 They say life has a habit of scuppering the best laid plans and in recent months this has been our experience. It was always our ambition to relocate permanently to Cornwall once our financial circumstances permitted. In addition we were going to bring my wife's parents with us as they are not getting any younger and my wife is an only child, so a support network would be vital. Currently they are five minutes around the corner in case of an emergency.  So after crunching the numbers, last May we put our house on the market and begin searching suitable locations in the South East of Cornwall somewhere between our holiday home in Pelynt nr Looe and St Austell as access to a rail station would be needed for my wife's work purposes. We had some success initially in finding properties suitable for multi-generational living, even put an offer one one in Looe which we later withdrew from after being made aware it was part of an increasingly bitter divorce battle. Our biggest stumbl...

  As I write this post at the end of 2025, I can’t help wondering where the year has gone!       I love Christmas music, and I have enjoyed listening to little else over the past month. However, I must confess that there are two songs I find particularly irritating.       The first is John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” with its lyric, “And so this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over, and a new one just begun.”        Maybe it’s just me that tends to hear that question in a slightly accusatory manner – what have you done this year? Have you actually achieved anything?       Perhaps I’m just feeling sensitive about the fact that as I look back over 2025, I don’t seem to have achieved very much when it comes to writing. There are a couple of projects I’ve made progress with – projects where other people have set the deadlines – but when it comes to my own writing, I’v...

January is the month of giving up: giving up overspending, overeating and under exercising. All the magazines are full of diets, ways to exercise and how to be wiser with our cash. While, like many of you, I will be planning a new start for my writing, I’m also looking for ways to be wiser with my words, time and energy. When I’ve made time to edit my more recent posts for More Than Writers (MTW), I realise how flabby my prose can be. I use too many conjunctions. Removing excess ands and buts means shorter sentences without losing meaning. For short stories, fewer unnecessary words mean I can add more to descriptions or at least get under the word count. While conjunctions may not be abundant in poetry, culling weak words or filler phrases in favour of stronger images is just as important. Making time to plan and structure my writing can also be more effective. Too many times, I have convinced myself that I could just run off a post in the last week of the month. I then ramble on a...

  I love the end of year/start of new year days. It’s fun to say to the kids, this is your last bath, you won’t have one for the rest of the year, or threaten with no more puddings for the rest of the year… Then there are all those new diaries you just have to get. Plotting ones, journalling ones, too pretty to use ones… Then there are the hard parts, the looking back and seeing the grief and heartache of the last year. Exactly two months ago my very special mum passed away, and that grief has been knocking at my door every day in odd moments, unexpected and rather unwelcome. This year has been harder, knocking me down more than I ever imagined could happen to me, but God has been closer and more gracious than I imagined as well. Our day to day lives have changed enormously, and slowly I have started to recover a little energy and I have a few beautiful new notebooks lined up for projects, although one or two may or may not be too nice to write in… In the Netherlands, till ab...