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| Jane Austen's memorial and gravestone |
Perhaps you might like to see Cassandra’s sister Jane Austen’s memorial and the inscription on her gravestone over at on that moonlighting hack Moran’s private website. What price loyalty? (Red)
Showing posts with label Moran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moran. Show all posts
Friday, February 07, 2025
Saturday, November 25, 2023
Submissions for Short Story of the Month
Just a reminder that we're always in need of new Short Story of the Month stories. There's no set deadline and when each month's story is selected, others in the inbox are released. Some may be carried over as possibles for a future month but generally turnaround is pretty quick, especially when compared to other publishers online.
There's no reading fee but we give a copy of one of our New Short Stories anthologies as sort of payment in kind. So although that's not cash, it's also not nothing - which is what many online publishers offer. At present we are out of copies of #12 but have a few #11 and some other back numbers.
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| Steve with mock-up WH in Gigi's. Photo by Vanessa Gebbie |
Please send your best wild or semi-tamed or even nice polite stories your parents would be pleased for you to marry to Willesden Herald Submittable and make my day. (Ed.)
Friday, October 28, 2022
Another walk in Grove Farm (26/10/2022)
Update: Originally a series of tweets with four photos each. The photos also had ALT text with more narrative. However since that troll Musk destroyed that forum, I had to escape. What follows are the raw photos. (Ed.)
A walk through Grove Farm from Sudbury Hill entrance (not listed online) to Whitton Avenue West, 26/10/2022. Grove Farm is designated by Ealing Council, which owns and maintains it, officially as a "Special Nature Reserve". Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grove_Farm,_Ealing
Sunday, October 02, 2022
A walk in Grove Farm local nature reserve
I got some nice pictures in Grove Farm, an official local nature reserve today. I'm usually too cowardly to walk there on my own. I don't want to get mugged. But you know, life is for living and and all that bally rot. Shared foxy earlier. One might do for a poem, perhaps. Did you see the fox? Ever feel like you're being watched?
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Day of the Flying Leaves by Stephen Moran
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| Cover flat - Day of the Flying Leaves - Stephen Moran |
“Like everyone, I go around imagining things, trying to identify what I see and hear and conserving memories. My poems are thoughts portrayed in words, in the belief that sometimes a word is worth a thousand pictures.” (Stephen Moran)
Tuesday, March 01, 2016
Letters / Emails
Feargal, tell that blaggard Moran that he is on a final warning for moonlighting. Do you see his name on the attached? If he can't devote his entire day to the job, there are plenty of others who are only too willing - and for nothing, nada, zippo. Internees they're called. If you need anything I'll be at my accountants (Coral). And whatever you do, don't put this on the front page.
Red Woodward prop.
Liars' League, Tuesday 8th March, 7:30 pm
Downstairs at The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP
"Entry costs a bargain £5 (cash only) and doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start as usual. See you in court!"
https://www.facebook.com/events/1576911725965600/
Red Woodward prop.
Downstairs at The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP
"Entry costs a bargain £5 (cash only) and doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start as usual. See you in court!"
https://www.facebook.com/events/1576911725965600/
Thursday, March 12, 2015
He's at it again
Yer man, Moran, is still moonlighting for other publications. This time it's something called Criminals, in Spelk Fiction. It's a wonder anything ever gets done around here. But his redundancy pay would cost so much that we can't afford to fire him.
Red Woodward
Red Woodward
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Moonlighting skiver does okay, we suppose
Naturally we're beside ourselves with joy for our very busy intern, Steve Moran, who has somehow managed to win himself a prize for some sort of "slam", whatever that is. If you want to find out more, it's down the bottom of this page. It doesn't mention him but I suppose we can take his word for it. It was Small Wonder's tenth anniversary but since Steve has won something there, I think we can assume that it's finished now. Although there were some great turns, the closing session was no great shakes this year by the way, v. poor. Not up to the usual standard and nothing to do with short stories!
Saturday, November 24, 2012
More better sooner repeater
As usual at this time of year, I worry about the number of entries to the short story competition. We need more. As to the quality, I'm finding that some fail due to what I would call general clumsiness. Sentences that should flow and follow may have been over-edited and become herky-jerky. Instead of them being a series of stepping stones there may be unfathomable chasms between each and the next. However, I still see a few interesting stories.
Steve
Steve
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| Official sponsor! |
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The Sense of a Short Story
I feel a bit of a misery for having written a list of blunders found in short stories. Such lists are not unusual and often repeat what others have said before. However it is much harder to talk about the qualities that enthral and delight, that transport us to unknown places and stir the emotions. What is that literary flavour beyond sweet and sour, the umami that makes me want to keep on reading?
1. A Sense of Perfection
There is a difference between evidence of raw talent and a finished product. Without practice and the unrestrained commitment that Pavarotti put in, for example, he would still have been Luciano, the guy with a great voice but unknown to the world. It is the combination of great ability, dedication and unqualified commitment that results in that feeling like being in a jet plane when it goes for take-off, when his voice at full power takes flight, and carries us with him.
A lot of people sing in the shower, a lot of people write stories. Not everyone has the voice, for a start, but equally not everyone gives all. Sentences are not well worked; narrative is somewhat choked off, restrained.
What is wonderful is when a gift for writing is combined with technical perfection and a free flowing narrative. When it succeeds, there is nothing laboured, all is like a swan sailing across a pond, seemingly without effort. It's not because Pavarotti could hit a high note. Actually, many of us could hit that note. It's the way he hits it. Clearly we don't want half measures, we don't want errors. But the sense of a short story is not about what we don't want. It's about what we desire, what life itself seldom offers, a sense of perfection.
2. A Sense of Adventure
This is not about secret agents, bandits, pirates, cowboys, though they are also part of it, it's something to do with a journey, danger, hazard, perhaps conflict.
It happens that space travellers, cowboys, romantic maidens, elves and so on go on journeys, encounter hazards and conflict, but seldom will they succeed in taking us with them. No, the sense of adventure is to do with a feeling that real people are in a real location, that we are with them, somewhere we might know, which is interesting, or somewhere we don't know, which can be even more interesting, and it's uncertain what is about to happen.
If there is a nagging thought that this is routine, that we know all this, then we fall into the "I have a life of my own" trap. As the woman says in The Ice Storm, when her lover starts to talk about his work, "I have a husband." What I seek is the feeling of landscape, of views across townscapes, of skies and the travel against weight, not weightless, where the progress interacts with a new environment. There must be people to meet, to find out about, an adventurer alone is a hard case. He or she had better be thinking about others or else we enter the dead zone of solipsism.
3. A Sense of Inspiration
You could call this a sense of interest, a sense of importance, a sense of significance, a sense of relevance. It’s the feeling that we’re onto something. Whatever you call it, it relies on a theme of sufficient weight. We're busy people. We have our own lives. Unless a story is of vital interest, why spend the time to read it? It must draw us in from the first paragraph.
However, we are resistant to being told what to think. We won’t stand for it. The miracle of fiction is how it enables us to share another's vision, see things through another's eyes for a spell, to enter a partly hallucinatory or dreamlike state. I suggest that this can occur when the writer has been inspired.
So what is it? Sometimes inspiration, like procreation, entails the fusion of two elements. You may think of these as spark and fuel. The spark is very small but active and the fuel is large and full of potential but static. The fuel is your theme, perhaps something that's been bugging you for some time. The spark is your angle, something trivial that you realise can be combined with your theme to bring it to life. That is your inspiration.
Hitchcock coined the term "the McGuffin" for something trivial that he used to build his suspenseful films around. For example, in North By Northwest and The Thirty-Nine Steps people chase around after something but we really don't care about the actual object of their pursuit. How many can even remember what it was?
Writing directly to a main theme runs the risk of becoming aphoristic, portentous, pompous, didactic, perhaps polemical. The trick is to write a story seemingly about the trivial one of your two elements, against a background of the main concern. This allows you to deal with what's bugging you, without seeming to talk about it at all. Without a theme, no matter how brilliant your writing, you will lose the reader. “All spark” is a bore.
Misdirection is as useful in fiction as in conjuring. Come to think of it, fiction is a form of conjuring.
4. A Sense of Humour
5. A Sense of Suspense
We return to Hitchcock and recall that he said his biggest mistake was to have the bomb go off in Blackmail. As long as the bomb hasn't gone off there is suspense. Yes, we want to know what happens next but only if something is at stake. If nothing is at stake, I couldn't care less what happens next. Salesmen have a mnemonic: ABC - Always Be Closing. The worst result in sales theory is a continuation. With fiction, it's the opposite: ABC - Always Be Continuing, and the worst result is closure. The urge to settle for an ending and declare the story closed is like a siren calling the writer, the captain of the story, onto fatal reefs.
6. A Sense of Wonder
1. A Sense of Perfection
There is a difference between evidence of raw talent and a finished product. Without practice and the unrestrained commitment that Pavarotti put in, for example, he would still have been Luciano, the guy with a great voice but unknown to the world. It is the combination of great ability, dedication and unqualified commitment that results in that feeling like being in a jet plane when it goes for take-off, when his voice at full power takes flight, and carries us with him.
What is wonderful is when a gift for writing is combined with technical perfection and a free flowing narrative. When it succeeds, there is nothing laboured, all is like a swan sailing across a pond, seemingly without effort. It's not because Pavarotti could hit a high note. Actually, many of us could hit that note. It's the way he hits it. Clearly we don't want half measures, we don't want errors. But the sense of a short story is not about what we don't want. It's about what we desire, what life itself seldom offers, a sense of perfection.
2. A Sense of Adventure
This is not about secret agents, bandits, pirates, cowboys, though they are also part of it, it's something to do with a journey, danger, hazard, perhaps conflict.
It happens that space travellers, cowboys, romantic maidens, elves and so on go on journeys, encounter hazards and conflict, but seldom will they succeed in taking us with them. No, the sense of adventure is to do with a feeling that real people are in a real location, that we are with them, somewhere we might know, which is interesting, or somewhere we don't know, which can be even more interesting, and it's uncertain what is about to happen.
If there is a nagging thought that this is routine, that we know all this, then we fall into the "I have a life of my own" trap. As the woman says in The Ice Storm, when her lover starts to talk about his work, "I have a husband." What I seek is the feeling of landscape, of views across townscapes, of skies and the travel against weight, not weightless, where the progress interacts with a new environment. There must be people to meet, to find out about, an adventurer alone is a hard case. He or she had better be thinking about others or else we enter the dead zone of solipsism.
3. A Sense of Inspiration
You could call this a sense of interest, a sense of importance, a sense of significance, a sense of relevance. It’s the feeling that we’re onto something. Whatever you call it, it relies on a theme of sufficient weight. We're busy people. We have our own lives. Unless a story is of vital interest, why spend the time to read it? It must draw us in from the first paragraph.
However, we are resistant to being told what to think. We won’t stand for it. The miracle of fiction is how it enables us to share another's vision, see things through another's eyes for a spell, to enter a partly hallucinatory or dreamlike state. I suggest that this can occur when the writer has been inspired.
So what is it? Sometimes inspiration, like procreation, entails the fusion of two elements. You may think of these as spark and fuel. The spark is very small but active and the fuel is large and full of potential but static. The fuel is your theme, perhaps something that's been bugging you for some time. The spark is your angle, something trivial that you realise can be combined with your theme to bring it to life. That is your inspiration.
Hitchcock coined the term "the McGuffin" for something trivial that he used to build his suspenseful films around. For example, in North By Northwest and The Thirty-Nine Steps people chase around after something but we really don't care about the actual object of their pursuit. How many can even remember what it was?
Writing directly to a main theme runs the risk of becoming aphoristic, portentous, pompous, didactic, perhaps polemical. The trick is to write a story seemingly about the trivial one of your two elements, against a background of the main concern. This allows you to deal with what's bugging you, without seeming to talk about it at all. Without a theme, no matter how brilliant your writing, you will lose the reader. “All spark” is a bore.
Misdirection is as useful in fiction as in conjuring. Come to think of it, fiction is a form of conjuring.
4. A Sense of Humour
The only place this occurs is in serious writing. Anything that tries to be funny is anathema. If you take any of the well-known comic writers, or writers whose work encompasses humour, you will find that it is all presented in a seemingly serious manner. The stories of Waugh, Wodehouse, Tom Sharpe, George Saunders, J. P. Donleavy, Saki, James Thurber, Garrison Keillor, David Sedaris are presented with a straight face. Even Jerome K. Jerome and George or was it the other Grossmith brother. The story is king.
All humour is incidental. In spite of ourselves, in spite of the author himself or herself, we find we are concerned with the theme, delighted by the inspiration, enthralled by the adventure and then to leaven the mixture, there is something funny. There are varieties of humour; laugh out loud when you know something is bound to go wrong but the character in question doesn't, a comical remark in dialogue, or smile at the petty concerns of a miser. It's something to involve you further with the story and to feel that we're on the same page as the author, we get it.
It's pleasing to think that we are reading alongside the author and other readers. There is something more exquisite in a shared experience, (and it doesn't take much imagination to find a suitable metaphor for that), the joy is redoubled. We might not know what the author thought about certain things, but we're pretty sure we're on the same wavelength and that others will be too, when the sense of humour shines through.
5. A Sense of Suspense
We return to Hitchcock and recall that he said his biggest mistake was to have the bomb go off in Blackmail. As long as the bomb hasn't gone off there is suspense. Yes, we want to know what happens next but only if something is at stake. If nothing is at stake, I couldn't care less what happens next. Salesmen have a mnemonic: ABC - Always Be Closing. The worst result in sales theory is a continuation. With fiction, it's the opposite: ABC - Always Be Continuing, and the worst result is closure. The urge to settle for an ending and declare the story closed is like a siren calling the writer, the captain of the story, onto fatal reefs.
6. A Sense of Wonder
This is what we're left with after reading a great short story. It leaves us thinking, literally wondering. There is a completeness to a short story but it is not the completeness of satiation, of finality, it's the completeness of entry or exit, a door that opens to wonder. The beginning is a door to a secret garden and the end is the same door. We can re-enter. Somebody (?) described the sonnet as a machine for thinking. Maybe we could describe the short story as a machine for wondering.
Conclusion
These categories are arbitrary. I might add more later, I might change their contents. I could as easily invoke the theatrical maxim, "Make them laugh, make them cry and scare the hell out of them". I only wanted to describe what it is that I like in a short story. Having typed this far, I find I'm none the wiser. I still couldn't tell you why the stories in The Magic Barrel are so sublime, or Dubliners. I don't know what it is Denis Johnson does, or Annie Proulx, or Chekhov, or William Trevor, etc. The list is long. I am in awe of them and all great short story writers. I don't give a damn about the novel. There, I've said it. (Actually, it's not true, I love reading novels.) As near as I can describe, what I desire is a sense of perfection and a sense of adventure. The rest of the headings and comments are tentative.
Steve Moran
Conclusion
These categories are arbitrary. I might add more later, I might change their contents. I could as easily invoke the theatrical maxim, "Make them laugh, make them cry and scare the hell out of them". I only wanted to describe what it is that I like in a short story. Having typed this far, I find I'm none the wiser. I still couldn't tell you why the stories in The Magic Barrel are so sublime, or Dubliners. I don't know what it is Denis Johnson does, or Annie Proulx, or Chekhov, or William Trevor, etc. The list is long. I am in awe of them and all great short story writers. I don't give a damn about the novel. There, I've said it. (Actually, it's not true, I love reading novels.) As near as I can describe, what I desire is a sense of perfection and a sense of adventure. The rest of the headings and comments are tentative.
Steve Moran
Monday, October 01, 2012
Notes from Small Wonder 2012
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Small Wonder 2012: Perspectives on China
with Fang Fang and Hilary Spurling
Fang Fang was asked through an interpreter at Small Wonder if China had literary festivals and live literature like this. By the way, we were a few dozen people, maybe 150 or so, huddled shivering in a draughty barn, in the back of beyond***. Fang Fang pointed out that they recently had a festival of poetry, where they had invited several British poets and bedecked a vast railway station with hundreds of large posters featuring poems by their guests and Chinese poets.
When asked about the epigraph to her story - it was a quote from Baudelaire - and what her influences were, she said that most Chinese writers could list you eight or ten western writers and that people recited Shakespeare and so forth. She wondered how many westerners could name ten Chinese writers? I thought Fang Fang was a bit defensive, and her prose (perhaps too literally translated for us on a screen) seemed to me to be full of allegorical sideswipes about smug outsiders looking in on a complex family society. (However, that might have been all in my mind!)
Her narrator is revealed to be a dead child at one point, looking on at its surviving family. This might be connected to her description of the move from social realism, which had been condemned by the party many years ago, to the current fashion (or was it policy?) for neo-realism, which had to contain no trace of the author's feelings. She also described this as like glass realism or zero realism (but I am not quoting verbatim).
Despite the language barrier, Fang Fang managed to inject a few bits of humour. She is very prolific. They said 80 novels, but I think they might have meant novellas, it wasn't clear. It might have been the questionable literal translation but her story came over as somewhat chaotic.
Tess chatted with her in Mandarin afterwards and I said "ni hao" and "xie xie", which exhausted my usable Chinese vocabulary, as there was no call for me to count to five. Fang Fang's contribution was only half the event. The other half was Hilary Spurling talking about Pearl Buck, the subject of her latest biography. However by happy chance, Fang Fang came from the same place as Pearl Buck and had a great interest and knowledge about her, and so that conversation (through translator) was very good.
Fang Fang recalled that when people in China first saw the Hollywood film adaptation of The Good Earth, they began by wondering why people with long noses were playing the parts of Chinese peasant farmers; but then as they got into the film, they forgot about that and were amazed to see their own lives portrayed there realistically for the first time.
Despite the technical difficulties with the simultaneous translation, and the heroic efforts of the distinguished chair of the discussion (? Jacobson) and the translator, it was a bold and timely attempt at promoting cultural exchange in the short story world. It's not before time we showed China and its people some empathy and respect, as I think they have cause to feel misunderstood, if not hard done by. I only mean in the cultural world, saying nothing here about politics, politicians or governance.
Steve Moran
Small Wonder short story festival
Fang Fang
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fang_Fang.
"Author of the year 2011" (womenofchina.cn)
Hilary Spurling
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Spurling
Guardian: "A Life in Writing", with reference to "Burying the Bones" her new biography of Pearl Buck
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Bulaga
Dublin Jimmy from the basement is smoking dope outside the backdoor while his Jamaican girlfriend is helping Mimi from Olongapo with the cooking. Mimi starts singing as she gives the dishes a final stir, "By the rivers of Babylon, where we lay down…”
Husband Cézar comes into the kitchen to help with the serving and joins in the song,"Hey yeh we wept, when we remembered Zion." Now the three all sing together, not loudly, and start odd dancefloor steps on the way to peer into a cauldron or ladle food onto platters.
In the living room the guests are mostly sitting on chairs arranged around the walls. As Cézar carries the first dishes in some of them revive the song they heard from the kitchen. An old woman claps along, not knowing the words.
More dishes from the kitchen and another verse of the song from Mimi. A slight pause then Jimmy's Aunt Ida, over from County Wicklow, continues in a deep baritone, "Let the words of our hearts and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight here tonight." She repeats it, exhorting the others with a wave of her arms and they all chime in, "By the rivers of Babylon where we lay down…"
Some of the small children are running and dancing wild, whirling dances. Left out, the smallest toddler looks like he’s about to cry. Then ancient Fernando from La Coruna, who has been ancient forever, puts his hands on Mimi’s and Cézar's shoulders beside the table and adds his wheezing falsetto, obligado, "Eh, eh, we we-e-e-e-pt! ... Yeah, ye-e-ah. Yeah, ye-e-ah..." Mimi at last says, "Come on, let's eat!"
Husband Cézar comes into the kitchen to help with the serving and joins in the song,"Hey yeh we wept, when we remembered Zion." Now the three all sing together, not loudly, and start odd dancefloor steps on the way to peer into a cauldron or ladle food onto platters.
In the living room the guests are mostly sitting on chairs arranged around the walls. As Cézar carries the first dishes in some of them revive the song they heard from the kitchen. An old woman claps along, not knowing the words.
More dishes from the kitchen and another verse of the song from Mimi. A slight pause then Jimmy's Aunt Ida, over from County Wicklow, continues in a deep baritone, "Let the words of our hearts and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight here tonight." She repeats it, exhorting the others with a wave of her arms and they all chime in, "By the rivers of Babylon where we lay down…"
Some of the small children are running and dancing wild, whirling dances. Left out, the smallest toddler looks like he’s about to cry. Then ancient Fernando from La Coruna, who has been ancient forever, puts his hands on Mimi’s and Cézar's shoulders beside the table and adds his wheezing falsetto, obligado, "Eh, eh, we we-e-e-e-pt! ... Yeah, ye-e-ah. Yeah, ye-e-ah..." Mimi at last says, "Come on, let's eat!"
Saturday, November 26, 2011
The real Irish presidential debate
...as seen by Steve Moran
A solar flare causes massive disruption to mobile phone networks, and widespread chaos. Among side effects that people have little time to worry about, the seven candidates in the Irish presidential election 2011 are stranded in a blacked out TV studio where they were preparing for a debate... (Continue)
More stories from Museum of Illusions:
Pain and the Stars: Robert Mitchum's expression says, I have a little pain but it's nothing I can't handle...(Continue)
Watching the Defectives - GOP foreign policy debate: "It's worth listening to the logic of people like Gingrich, absolute moral bankruptcy: covert operations 'all deniable'. Deniable - why? A big question..." (Continue)
A solar flare causes massive disruption to mobile phone networks, and widespread chaos. Among side effects that people have little time to worry about, the seven candidates in the Irish presidential election 2011 are stranded in a blacked out TV studio where they were preparing for a debate... (Continue)
More stories from Museum of Illusions:
Pain and the Stars: Robert Mitchum's expression says, I have a little pain but it's nothing I can't handle...
Watching the Defectives - GOP foreign policy debate: "It's worth listening to the logic of people like Gingrich, absolute moral bankruptcy: covert operations 'all deniable'. Deniable - why? A big question..." (Continue)
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Library centre regeneration plan announced
http://www.brent.gov.uk/regeneration.nsf/Willesden%20Green%20Library/LBB-343
"We are pressing on with plans to redevelop Willesden Green Library Centre and regenerate Willesden High Road."
Notes
Those two projects are completely unrelated. The latter comprises the spending of £500,000 disbursed by the mayor of London. The former is a planned project to demolish the library centre and put up a new building funded by donating the car park to some preferred builder.
In the past few years, over £600,000 has been spent refurbishing the library centre, including money from the Heritage Lottery fund and the cost of moving the Brent Museum out of another juicy location for builder deals to its present home.
This part of the borough is Willesden, not Willesden Green. Willesden Green is approximately the area around the underground station. Willesden is centred approximately where the library centre now stands. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Brent borough council swallowed up the historic Willesden borough council which stretched out as far as Harlesden where the "Wilesdune" ancient pilgrimage site and "black madonna" are. I moved to a house not far from the library centre nearly twenty years ago and the former occupant corrected me then as to the name of the area, when I made the same mistake.
Why didn't they do it right first time, if the present building is so terrible? Actually it seems a very good facility complete with car park. They have been systematically running it down, letting it fall into dereliction and (revealingly) making it extremely inconvenient and hazardous to use the car park.
We will want to see complete detailed records for all staffing, fees, and expenses involved in this new project. I want to know if any councillors are receiving any benefits in kind or any consultancy or other perks from the preferred builders. Have they got relatives there? They should know that if there is any corruption it will be found and they will be on their way to our other local (not very modern) community centre that goes by the historic name of Wormwood Scrubs.
Steve
"We are pressing on with plans to redevelop Willesden Green Library Centre and regenerate Willesden High Road."
Notes
Those two projects are completely unrelated. The latter comprises the spending of £500,000 disbursed by the mayor of London. The former is a planned project to demolish the library centre and put up a new building funded by donating the car park to some preferred builder.
In the past few years, over £600,000 has been spent refurbishing the library centre, including money from the Heritage Lottery fund and the cost of moving the Brent Museum out of another juicy location for builder deals to its present home.
This part of the borough is Willesden, not Willesden Green. Willesden Green is approximately the area around the underground station. Willesden is centred approximately where the library centre now stands. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Brent borough council swallowed up the historic Willesden borough council which stretched out as far as Harlesden where the "Wilesdune" ancient pilgrimage site and "black madonna" are. I moved to a house not far from the library centre nearly twenty years ago and the former occupant corrected me then as to the name of the area, when I made the same mistake.
Why didn't they do it right first time, if the present building is so terrible? Actually it seems a very good facility complete with car park. They have been systematically running it down, letting it fall into dereliction and (revealingly) making it extremely inconvenient and hazardous to use the car park.
We will want to see complete detailed records for all staffing, fees, and expenses involved in this new project. I want to know if any councillors are receiving any benefits in kind or any consultancy or other perks from the preferred builders. Have they got relatives there? They should know that if there is any corruption it will be found and they will be on their way to our other local (not very modern) community centre that goes by the historic name of Wormwood Scrubs.
Steve
Friday, May 20, 2011
Steve's 10 tracks NOT to slash your wrists by
Apparently there is an album called "Tracks to slash your wrists by". So why not an opposing list?
1. Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran
You don't have to be tall
2. Eloise - Paul and Barry Ryan
You don't have to be cool
3. My Perfect Cousin* - The Undertones
You don't have to be intelligent
4. Itchycoo Park - The Small Faces
You don't have to be able to dance
5. Anthem - Leonard Cohen
You don't have to be cheerful
6. Angel Flyin' Too Close to the Ground - Willie Nelson and Shelby Lynne
You don't have to be with someone
7. For My Lover - Tracy Chapman
You don't have to be sane
8. The Harder they Come - Jimmy Cliff
You don't have to be rich
9. I Dreamed A Dream* - Susan Boyle
You don't have to be young and beautiful
10. Baby I Need Your Lovin' - The Four Tops
The defence rests
Steve Moran
* These ones are skipped in the playlist but you can view them by clicking the separate links.
1. Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran
You don't have to be tall
2. Eloise - Paul and Barry Ryan
You don't have to be cool
3. My Perfect Cousin* - The Undertones
You don't have to be intelligent
4. Itchycoo Park - The Small Faces
You don't have to be able to dance
5. Anthem - Leonard Cohen
You don't have to be cheerful
6. Angel Flyin' Too Close to the Ground - Willie Nelson and Shelby Lynne
You don't have to be with someone
7. For My Lover - Tracy Chapman
You don't have to be sane
8. The Harder they Come - Jimmy Cliff
You don't have to be rich
9. I Dreamed A Dream* - Susan Boyle
You don't have to be young and beautiful
10. Baby I Need Your Lovin' - The Four Tops
The defence rests
Steve Moran
* These ones are skipped in the playlist but you can view them by clicking the separate links.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
March for the alternative
A march for constructive alternatives to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government's brute force approach to the "national debt crisis". Their policies are more appropriate to Dr Who than to Dr Finlay, they think that smashing the controls will save the ship of state from crashing. The first thing they should do is collect the tax dodged by their plutocratic friends and financiers. At the same time, let's have our money back from the banks now that they are swimming in it. "The country" or the government, depending on how you look at it, is in terrible debt, presumably to banks of some sort ultimately, because they have had to support banks to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. They are borrowing from banks to give to banks and their only plan is to take more money from the poor and hard up.
Speakers in Hyde Park estimated the crowd at half a million. Hours after the start of the march, when Hyde Park was already crowded, a phone call from a friend confirmed that the march was still proceeding from Embankment, miles away. I passed by the Ritz Hotel and Fortnum and Mason's twice (I went back to meet others) and I didn't see any trouble whatsoever anywhere along the way. Yet, when I reached home and turned on the TV, the first thing I saw was reports about the anarchists running riot around town and attacking the Ritz, etc, with BBC reporters wearing crash helmets. The people with the official march are quite frustrated that the sideshow created by a few has provided an excuse for government supporters to turn up their noses at the protests.
Most speakers highlighted the fact that unpaid taxes are more than the amount needed to solve "the national debt crisis". But since the banks are now raking in billions again, surely there is a way to say to them, give us our money back NOW - we need it. They evidently are swimming in it as they give themselves million pound bonuses like scooby snacks.
Audio: A fiery speech by Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union at the demo today, introduced by Tony Robinson
Steve Moran
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| The march passing by Green Park |
Speakers in Hyde Park estimated the crowd at half a million. Hours after the start of the march, when Hyde Park was already crowded, a phone call from a friend confirmed that the march was still proceeding from Embankment, miles away. I passed by the Ritz Hotel and Fortnum and Mason's twice (I went back to meet others) and I didn't see any trouble whatsoever anywhere along the way. Yet, when I reached home and turned on the TV, the first thing I saw was reports about the anarchists running riot around town and attacking the Ritz, etc, with BBC reporters wearing crash helmets. The people with the official march are quite frustrated that the sideshow created by a few has provided an excuse for government supporters to turn up their noses at the protests.
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| Today's demo passing by the Ritz with no trouble of any kind |
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| All the leftist factions were out in force. |
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| East London Mental Health Unison branch banner |
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| Does this look like an anarchist riot? |
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| Arriving in Hyde Park. Achilles in the background with big red flag. |
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| Verdict on the government's plans |
Audio: A fiery speech by Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union at the demo today, introduced by Tony Robinson
Steve Moran
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Come all ye
6th annual Willesden Herald international short story competition
Competition entries are now coming in at a rate of about eight per day and rising. I look forward to finding stories with real attack, humour, a distinct and compelling voice, sense of adventure, landscape, time passing, engagement beyond solipsism, perhaps themes that rise a little above the problem of which fork to use for the starter and which for the main, which is not to say that nothing of any interest ever takes place in a tearoom. Didn't the boy eat oysters, shell and all in a Moscow café, and did we hear anything about their annoying neighbours or disgusting spouse? No. Give me something that matters, something that makes me pace like that boy's father. What is it that makes you angry, where is the love, the satire, travel, conflict? I'm sick of the tinkling of teacups and the swimming with waterwings. Do you read Hemingway, Chekhov, D. H. Lawrence, Denis Johnson, David Means, Annie Proulx, George Saunders, Maile Meloy, Hanif Kureishi, James Lasdun, Angela Carter, Lorrie Moore, Bernard MacLaverty, Arthur Shnitzler, Arthur Miller or Arthur Askey and Arthur Guinness? Aim high to allow for the trajectory of the narrative curving towards the target. Or something like that.
Steve Moran
Competition entries are now coming in at a rate of about eight per day and rising. I look forward to finding stories with real attack, humour, a distinct and compelling voice, sense of adventure, landscape, time passing, engagement beyond solipsism, perhaps themes that rise a little above the problem of which fork to use for the starter and which for the main, which is not to say that nothing of any interest ever takes place in a tearoom. Didn't the boy eat oysters, shell and all in a Moscow café, and did we hear anything about their annoying neighbours or disgusting spouse? No. Give me something that matters, something that makes me pace like that boy's father. What is it that makes you angry, where is the love, the satire, travel, conflict? I'm sick of the tinkling of teacups and the swimming with waterwings. Do you read Hemingway, Chekhov, D. H. Lawrence, Denis Johnson, David Means, Annie Proulx, George Saunders, Maile Meloy, Hanif Kureishi, James Lasdun, Angela Carter, Lorrie Moore, Bernard MacLaverty, Arthur Shnitzler, Arthur Miller or Arthur Askey and Arthur Guinness? Aim high to allow for the trajectory of the narrative curving towards the target. Or something like that.
Steve Moran
Saturday, November 13, 2010
More better stories please
The short story competition closes on December 17th. So far I have one story for the short list. The problem is not quantity but quality. To you the very good writers out there this means an open goal. So send in your best story. You will be joining a very good list, look at how well writers from the previous short lists have done: Norman Mailer Award, BBC Book At Bedtime, Asham Award, books published by many different publishers. The aim of this competition is to encourage the creation of excellent new short stories. You don't have to be young, you don't have to be published, you don't have to be resident in any country, you don't have to write to any theme. There are no copyright problems and the entry fee is a nominal amount. If you have a fine story, this is your chance to find recognition, get it in a book, win a prize. Link
Steve Moran
Steve Moran
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Herald hack extraordinaire
Museum of Illusions
We're big enough to applaud when some of our staff get websites of their own, so reluctant congratulations to Steve on his quaint wee home page.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Competition health bulletin - as well as can be expected
The number of entries to date: 85
Possibles for shortlist: 3 is stretching it
There is still all to play for. Closing date is December 18th, but it helps to have the entries more evenly distributed rather than all at the last minute.
Hundreds, getting on for thousands enter but only tens of copies of the anthologies are bought. Please consider buying some of these books to read the winning short stories from previous years:
New Short Stories 3 - featuring "Work" by Jo Lloyd
New Short Stories 1 - featuring "Kid in a Well" by Willie Davis
Fish Drink Like Us - featuring "Secure" by Mikey Delgado
Steve Moran
Possibles for shortlist: 3 is stretching it
There is still all to play for. Closing date is December 18th, but it helps to have the entries more evenly distributed rather than all at the last minute.
Hundreds, getting on for thousands enter but only tens of copies of the anthologies are bought. Please consider buying some of these books to read the winning short stories from previous years:
New Short Stories 3 - featuring "Work" by Jo Lloyd
New Short Stories 1 - featuring "Kid in a Well" by Willie Davis
Fish Drink Like Us - featuring "Secure" by Mikey Delgado
Steve Moran
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