The Limehouse Golem is a Ripperesque throat-slasher stuffed full of London fog, grubby horse-drawn coaches, grimy cockney characters and naïve prostitutes with dirt smeared on their faces. Was it ever clean in London? It stars Bill Nighy, Olivia Cooke and… Read More ›
Strays
The non-writerly things I burble about…
I am me. Really.
Yesterday I had to visit a solicitor’s office to have my identity validated. I’d failed a money laundering test because I have two addresses and it wasn’t clear to anybody, including me, in which one I lived. According to the… Read More ›
That Moment
Five months ago a very important person in my life died. I was there. I saw it all. Senses diminished. Movement slowed. Breathing stopped. It might be witnessing the mechanics of dying, or trying to accommodate the loss, or just failing to comprehend nothingness…. Read More ›
A cure for the common cold
You have razor blades in your throat and water-filled eyes and bubbling nostrils and you’ve become deaf in one ear and you can’t talk without coughing yourself inside out, and every now and then you sneeze and sneeze and sneeze until your nose falls… Read More ›
Please vote on the 23rd
It would have been lovely, wouldn’t it, if we’d been able to have an inclusive debate in which the pros and cons of remaining in, or exiting from, the European Union were aired and discussed and respected? But we didn’t. Instead we… Read More ›
You are so very very big…
“Let us praise God. Oh Lord, oooh you are so big. So absolutely huge. Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here I can tell you. Forgive us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying and barefaced flattery. But you are so… Read More ›
A quiet night in
It’s official: I have tinnitus. So the cracks, pops, whistles, groans and the constant background hiss, like a layer of cicadas inside my head, are here to stay. For a while at least. Probably. There is ambiguity. I’m told tinnitus is… Read More ›
2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 400 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it… Read More ›
Begin at the end and end at the beginning (or how to fail exams and confuse your friends)
Excuse me if these words look wobbly. I am taking a short break from NaNoWriMo 2015. National Novel Writing Month means just that – writing a novel in a month. 50,000 words minimum, 70,000+ if you want to hit a… Read More ›
Living in Bath – cigar optional
It’s more than two weeks since we moved from South London to South Bath; eighteen days since we swapped the bars, restaurants and sirens for the stillness and silence that surround our new home when darkness falls. It feels like… Read More ›
JAMES ELLIS in words 