The people taking part in the Hallowe’en Horror story idea were: Stephen Lang, who wrote two — Lock And Key and Spells The Goldfish, who wrote Better Late Than Never Mike Cherim, for whom It happened in 1972 Jess, who asked the question Is it you? LuAn brought us Nobody. Sara, who brought us Peg [...]

Well, I missed Blog Action Day (October 15th) owing to having been somewhat busy — it’s not often I go more than a week without posting, after all — but I did notice something of interest. ounced himself as a Rob Mason announced himself as a “Purist Undiscovered Young Upstart” — and who am I [...]

It’s my big ‘un, BTP’s birthday this weekend. Last weekend we had a combined party for him and SWP at a place called The Giant’s Den, which is one of those warehouse jobbies full of soft play equipment where parents can sit and have a cup of coffee while the cacophony created by a horde [...]

Sometimes being someone who is committed to web accessibility feels like it’s not a good thing. You get the feeling people feel you’re some kind of zealot (even if you aren’t); you get the feeling that other people think that when you raise the issue of accessibility you’re being awkward or causing problems, that it’s [...]

My mam makes exceedingly good cakes: look at this lot.

I’ve been to the Whinfell Forest CenterParcs ‘holiday centre’ before, and while I basically remembered it as not exactly my ideal holiday destination (no items of historical or cultural significance to look at, no decent bars and importantly it’s not one of the Greek islands), it’s not that bad and it is good for the [...]

I might have mentioned before, the elder of my two children will be starting school next September, and we’ve had to apply for his school. There are a number of things you need to consider when you’re considering your son’s primary education, because you know it’s important (it’s one more thing that as a parent, [...]

My little ‘un, SWP was two this weekend. So we had a family tea party, which was good fun, particularly the Train Cake made by Grandma Jenny (see the Grandma Jenny Cakes collection). The train had nine separate carriages, each of which were decorated lavishly (mostly with sweeties) and was then lovingly placed on tracks [...]

It’s quite simple. Write a scary story for Hallowe’en, and publish it after sundown in whatever amounts to your local timezone. If you fancy taking part, leave a comment: I’ll keep track of everyone who does so and will produce a round-up post for the event. There’s four rules: it has to be fiction, it [...]

Akismet, bless its little cotton socks, has now drowned over 20,000 spam comments to this blog in a bucket and then flushed them down the lavatory of the internet. Meanwhile, I’ve reached over 1,100 genuine comments at an average of just under three per post, but that’s a rather meaningless statistic since some posts have [...]