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You Couldn't Make It Up by Nigel Oakley

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‘You couldn’t make it up.’ That’s the trouble, the worry, and my concern. Try as I might, avoiding the news these days is well-nigh impossible. However, I can’t help thinking if I, or any other author for that matter, wrote a story about a man who preyed on weak and vulnerable girls, but who had so many rich and powerful (and male) friends who not only protected him but, when he finally got into trouble, were neither prosecuted nor investigated themselves. And if I also wrote that this man, on his release from prison, had female friends who would find girls for him – or ask him to visit when their own daughters were home – the manuscript would have been rejected out of hand as beyond the realms of credibility. And yet it looks like this has happened ‘in real life.’ Lower down the social scale, amongst those of us with less access to money and position, we wonder why women don’t feel safe. I have had a phone conversation with my son terminated – because he needed to make sure the line w...
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 https://www.michaeloglesby.com Have any of you seen the Inside Out sequel? One of the parts that made me laugh the most was when the character Nostalgia kept appearing. Riley, as a 12–13-year-old, is far too young to have that character, but for me, as a 52-year-old, she can certainly appear — and she has, in an unexpected way. As I’ve often mentioned here, I’m a member of an online writers’ group called Alpha Writers , and our latest challenge was to write a villanelle — a poem with a repeating refrain. Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas was the example we were given. So where does nostalgia come in? Well, that was the theme of the challenge. I struggled with this for a bit, but then I was asked a question recently: if I could go back in time, would I want to return to a place, an object, or a person? I initially decided on a place — my old boarding school. I went to boarding school from the age of eight, and I loved it. It was the perfect escape from my...
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 Learning to sing my story - Christine Cleave I need a stroll around the garden to wake me up in the morning and a few days ago there was a treat in store - a small robin singing its heart out on the summit of a neighbouring tree. The musical twirls and flourishes stopped me dead in my tracks, as I wondered what the bird was saying - “This is my territory”?  Or was he broadcasting his search for a mate: “Come to my tree, lovely lady robins, and see what a very fine fellow I am!” Apparently, early humans sang before they learned to speak. I imagine a skin-clad man loudly carolling (but not verbalizing) the message, ‘I’m off to the forest to hunt deer.’ This might be accompanied by chest-pummelling and gestures in the correct direction. Maybe Stone Age man and the robin have something in common?   There are still tribes living in the Amazon basin that communicate in song. . . However, I must not let myself get diverted from the main purpose, which is to share my writing jou...
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In Praise of Low Tide

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I grew up in Whitstable, Kent, about a three-minute bike ride from the sea. For some indigenous folk, Whitstable is a proud member of the Norf Kenn Cose where the unspoken rule of leevin’ ou’ ‘ard consonance is a way of life, innit? My mother, an elocution and speech therapist, often despaired as I absorbed the Whitstable ‘Oi’ mixing as I did with all and sundry, from the posh end of Chestfield - pronounced with a definite t, f and d - to Whitstable town centre, where such luxuries were deemed unnecessary. That, and an American father with his soft Kentuckian accent, left me, vocally, closer to Greenland (!) than Washington DC or London.  We absorb our environments, and if we’re not exactly chameleons or shape-shifters, their deposits in us are long-lasting and emerge in our writing, in the content and characters we invent for poetry or novels.  Low tide in Whitstable is a thing of beauty. The mudflats clear the sea back about half a mile from shore every six hours, exposin...
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Love Stories

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Image by Josch13 from Pixabay Last Sunday at church, a friend asked me how I planned to celebrate St Valentine’s Day. I sighed, winced, laughed and said – as nicely as I could – “Don’t ever ask a single person about Valentine’s Day.” This person is someone I greatly like and respect, and I knew they hadn’t intended any offence, it was just a light-hearted comment. All the same, let the message land: I am delighted to ignore St Valentine’s Day every year. Except at church, where we emphasise that St Valentine’s is really about celebrating God’s love for each one of us, whatever our marital or non-marital status is. St Valentine was a martyr: there was nothing fluffy about him. Which leads me onto the recent hype about the Greatest Love Story Ever Told (not), the new film of Wuthering Heights directed by Emerald Fennell, starring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. I have no intention of seeing it, or at least I don’t intend to pay to see it. That’s because I re...
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Names Are Important

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Picture Credit: AI Last week I had a great time working with a terrific bunch of folk from the NHS hoping to become accredited workplace mediators. To deeply embed the learning, the six-day course ended with three days of assessed role-play where they could practice their skills before being let loose on proper cases. It’s an excellent way to learn, and despite initial nerves, it wasn’t long before they embodied whatever part they’d taken on. I saw some Oscar-winning performances! One of the essential parts was the aggrieved employee, and it was fascinating to observe the real-life learning they got from mock scenarios. A particular learning point was how important it is to remember people’s names. When a mediator got the name of the aggrieved party wrong several times, they got the full force of their feelings.. . ‘you don’t care about me... you don’t even know my name.’ Names are important, and it’s a thread I follow in ‘A Sense of Identity’, the recent novel I’ve started writing. ...
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Understanding Outcome over Effort

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 In the world of professional sport in particular, much is made of the effort needed to achieve even a moderate amount of success. An old adage goes that when the records are examined in future years, very rarely does anybody remember who came second. In some ways this is a reflection on life itself. In 1 Corinthians 9: 24,  St Paul who knew a thing or two about outcome and effort wrote the following,  "Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it."   Image Credit: Pinterest.com  In verses 25-26 he goes further,  "Athletes exercise self-control in all things: they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air." As writers we all have our own way of doing things regardless of the genre with which we choose to express ourselves and to our intended audiences. Are we the disciplined kind lik...
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