Just back from 24 hours in the European Capital of Culture where Michael Murphy (left) was launching his new Shoestring pamphlet Allotments and Deryn Rees-Jones launched her new pamphlet Falls And Finds. Michael’s pamphlet is full of poems written during his residency at the National Wildflower Centre, where the launch took place and where, after a fine reading by the couple, we had a good walk amongst the wild flowers, scarecrows and quirky ephemera. The evening also gave us a chance to catch up with old friends and remind ourselves of how loquacious LIverpool taxi drivers are, a much better ad for the city than the building site that surrounded our hard-to-find hotel. Never mind covering up the eyesores with hoardings, how about a few…

I’m writing this in the basement of the University of Leicester’s David Wilson Library, where there’s an excellent exhibition about the work of Sue Townsend, who recently donated her archives to the university (and was awarded a fellowship). Half of the small exhibition is about the origins of her best known character, Adrian Mole. In early versions of the Mole sagas, he was called ‘Nigel’ (and, briefly, ‘Malcolm’). The reason for the change was the likelihood of confusion with Nigel Molesworth, Ronald Searle’s anarchic schoolboy diarist. I remember reading the first Mole book back when it appeared in paperback in 1984, my partner and I laughing aloud on the bus. We were training to be teachers, teaching boys Adrian’s age, which made it even funnier,…

Just back from a few days in Derbyshire and the summer storms have begun in earnest. Not found time to write here recently, though I have been making random comments here. Most of my ‘followers’ seem to be self publicists, so I’d welcome some people I actually know… While in Winster, I demolished one entire fat novel, Steve Tesich‘s ‘Karoo’, a comic masterpiece about a self destructive script doctor, as recommended by Frank Cottrell Boyce. I also read the first third of Philip Davis’s fine biography of one of my favourite writers, Bernard Malamud, an absorbing, superbly researched study, particularly good on the drafting process. I continued my trawl through selected comic works of Brian Michael Bendis by reading the first half of his ‘Alias’…

We’ve never really considered having a scarecrow in our allotment. However, with all the summer fruits out and under attack, one would come in useful. Seeing the beauty above at the Jardin Des Plantes in Paris last week, has made the idea tempting. The CD eyes and half CD mouth are very effective, and only the French would think to give a scarecrow that rather stylish jacket. Once my novel edit’s out of the way, I feel a summer project coming on.