Beethoven ‘Kreutzer’ sonata

Joshua Bell and Yuja Wang
Verbier Festival, 28 July 2010



The best of the best in music

Our best ever post (dance video)

"Dancing to No One by Alicia Keys.. Watch it if you want to, but if you don't want to - then don't. I don't want to pressure you into anything.." Justin Lawrence Hoyt

Life!
Happy new year (from Alaska)

The coming of the Anti-Worker

It looks like Trump's billionaire's club administration must have said, "Who can we get who would be the most anti-worker person imaginable?" and come up with this Puzder putz for "Secretary of Labor".

And next, whoever is to be put in charge of firefighters will turn them into book burners, as in Fahrenheit 451.

Crow's nest

Crow's nest in an oak tree, South Vale

At this time of year, you can see where the birds nested, and also why that place at the top of a mast is called the crow's nest. There are a lot of crows around Harrow, as Brendan Behan seems to have known when he wrote "In our dreams we see old Harrow and we hear the crow's loud caw*". You can indeed hear and see them if you walk around here, and that looks like one of their nests at the top of an oak tree.

* At the flower show, our big marrow took the prize from Evelyn Waugh.

The story of Brexit in 2016 summarised in two minutes

Cassetteboy -v- Brexit

Bus shelter graffiti, Harrow Road, W10

"This system is rotten to the core and we are all slaves"

New Short Stories 9: Awards and Launch

Willesden Green Library Centre, December 8th

Katy Darby announces the overall winner and runners-up in the Willesden Herald international short story competition 2016, and shares her responses to each of the stories. In the audience were all but one of the writers whose stories were short-listed, including some who travelled from as far away as Italy, France and America.

Towards the end of the video, it becomes clear which story has taken first prize, and we proceed to the presentation and a charming acceptance speech.

And the winner is…

First prize and the one-off mug, inscribed “Willesden Short Story Prize 2016”, and Champagne goes to Love and Hair by Olga Zilberbourg.

Katy also announced equal runners-up, receiving consolation prizes:
The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival by David Lewis
Undercurrents by Gina Challen

In accordance with the rules, the prize fund of £750 was divided equally among the finalists, who also received two copies each of the anthology.

Here is Miranda Harrison, reading from the opening of Love and Hair by Olga Zilberbourg.

To find out who really sent the text, and what happens in the end, you will have to read Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 9. Available from our own shop, Amazon.co.uk for UK, Ireland and Europe, Amazon.com for US and rest of the world, and other online booksellers. ISBN: 978-0-9852133-7-4

The ten best short stories of 2016, are presented in the random sequence in which they were originally read, as good a system as any!, and together present a pleasing selection of contemporary fiction, or to put it more snappily:

Unspeakable secrets, disappeared husbands, bisexual love triangles, revolutionary conspiracies and African odysseys: from Sixties Paris to San Francisco, Arundel to Latin America, poets, murderers, musicians, schoolkids and festive firearms fanciers stalk these pages, waiting to greet you.

Winning Stories: Undercurrents by Gina Challen; Twisted by Tracy Fells; Looking for Nathalie by Susan Haigh; All That Remains by Rob Hawke; The Volcano by Anna Lewis; The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival by David Lewis; The Cliffs of Bandiagara by Catherine McNamara; Supersum by Barbara Robinson; Last Call at the Rialto by Daniel Waugh; Love and Hair by Olga Zilberbourg

With an introduction by 2016 judge, Katy Darby

supported by

Trump's phone calls to Obama, entirely believable

Conan O'Brien presents

Results and Book Launch – Willesden December 8th

Why not come to our results and book launch event this Thursday at Willesden Library Centre, from 7:30 pm? We’re putting on a terrific show as well as announcing the overall winner for 2016 and prizegiving. Professional actors will bring short excerpts from some of the finalist stories to life.

This is a FREE EVENT, venue capacity 100 seated. Refreshments will be provided. First come, first served.

For more details, see this Facebook event listing.

OUR ACTORS
Courtesy of Liars’ League

Tony Bell. Evening Standard Award nominee for A Man for All Seasons, Tony Bell has performed all over the world with award-winning all-male Shakespeare company, Propeller, playing Bottom, Feste, Autolycus and Tranio. TV includes Coronation Street, Holby City, Midsomer Murders, EastEnders & The Bill. He recently played Brian Clough’s sidekick Peter Taylor in the stage adaptation of The Damned United at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. He also appeared in Phelin McDermott’s Improbable production of The Tempest. He now splits his time between directing in drama schools, acting and occasionally reading great stories. He is also a radio and voiceover artist.

Miranda Harrison Actor, voiceover artist and storyteller, Miranda Harrison is a regular performer with Liars’ League, including performances at The National Gallery and the Literary Pub Crawl. Other spoken word credits include book reading and performance art events. Miranda is regularly cast in rehearsed readings for new theatre writing, and she also runs new writing event Page to Stage. Stage credits range from the classics (e.g. Romeo & Juliet; Blood Wedding) to contemporary (e.g. The Memory of Water; The Vagina Monologues). Voiceover work includes BBC Children in Need, online tutorials and a best-selling English-language teaching pack for Italian teenagers. www.mirandaharrison.co.uk

Peter Kenny has worked for A&BC, The Royal Shakespeare Co. and The BBC Radio Drama Co. An award-winning recorder of audio-books, he has read over 100 titles, everything from Iain M. Banks, Neil Gaiman, and Andrzej Sapkowski to Jonas Jonasson and Paul O’Grady “…from the sublime to the cor blimey!”  Visit peterkenny.com

New Short Stories 9

• All That Remains by Rob Hawke
• The Cliffs of Bandiagara by Catherine McNamara
• Last Call at the Rialto by Daniel Waugh
• Looking for Nathalie by Susan Haigh
• Love and Hair by Olga Zilberbourg
• The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival by David Lewis
• Supersum by Barbara Robinson
• Twisted by Tracy Fells
• Undercurrents by Gina Challen
• The Volcano by Anna Lewis

Meet the Authors

Gina Challen is originally from London. She moved to West Sussex in 1979. In 2012, she left her job as an insurance broker to complete a masters degree in creative writing. This she fondly refers to as her mid-life crisis. Although originally a city girl, the farmsteads and woods of the downlands hold her heart, they are the inspiration for her writing, the landscape to which she knows she belongs. Previously, her stories have been anthologised in The Bristol Short Story Prize Volume 8 2015, the Cinnamon Press Short Story Award collections 2012 & 2013, and the Willesden Herald New Short Stories 8, 2014 and Rattle Tales 2, 2012. Two of her stories were shortlisted for the prestigious Bridport Prize in 2014. You can also find her stories and critical essays online with Ink Tears and Storgy magazines and Thresholds Short Story Forum. She is currently working on a short story collection. www.ginachallen.co.uk

Tracy Fells lives close to the South Downs in glorious West Sussex. She has won awards for both fiction and drama. Her short stories have appeared in Firewords Quarterly, The Yellow Room and Writer’s Forum, online at Litro New York, Short Story Sunday and in anthologies such as Fugue, Rattle Tales and A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed. Competition success includes short-listings for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize, Brighton Prize, Fish Short Story and Flash Fiction Prizes. Tracy completed her MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University in 2016 and is currently seeking representation for a crime mystery novel and her short story collection. She shares a blog with The Literary Pig (tracyfells.blogspot.co.uk) and tweets as @theliterarypig.

Susan Haigh returned to northeast Fife in 2013, having spent eight years living in a cave house in the Loire Valley. She had previously worked on a series of short stories, supported by a Scottish Book Trust mentoring scheme, and continued to write stories and a novel in a caravan under a vine by a river (not as glamorous as it sounds!). Her work has won several awards in Britain and the USA and has been published in Mslexia, Cadenza Magazine, Sunpenny Anthology, New Writing Dundee 8, BeginningAnthology, the Scottish Arts Club Short Story Awards website, the Women of Dundee and Books anthology and a number of American journals and anthologies.  In 2016 she appeared on a short list of six for a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and published poems in Scottish literary journals, Northwords Now, Gutter Magazine and the StAnza Map of Scotland in Poems. She was also a finalist in the 2016 Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition. She reviews and interviews for a number of journals, including Dundee University Review of the Arts. She teaches German at Dundee University.

Rob Hawke lives and works in Camberwell, London. His short fiction has featured in Momaya Short Story Review and Shooter Literary Magazine, and he holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from University of Sussex. He is currently working on his first full length novel, a political drama set in South West England. To support his writing Rob works part time at a psychology institute.

Anna Lewis’s stories have appeared in journals including New Welsh Review and The Interpreter’s House. Her stories and poems have won several awards, and she was short-listed for the Willesden Herald short story prize in 2013. She is the author of two poetry collections: Other Harbours (Parthian, 2012) and The Blue Cell (Rack Press, 2015). She lives in Cardiff.

David Lewis grew up in Oklahoma, did an MA at UCL in London and now lives in Paris. His short stories and essays have appeared in J’aime mon quartier, je ramasse, Chelsea Station, Liars’ League, The 2013 Fish Anthology, Indestructible and Talking Points Memo. He irregularly posts essays and translations on Medium, as @dwlewis.

Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write, and ended up in West Africa running a bar. She was an embassy secretary in pre-war Mogadishu, and has worked as an au pair, graphic designer, translator, English teacher and shoe model. Her short story collection Pelt and Other Stories was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Award and semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize. Her work has been Pushcart-nominated and published in the U.K., Europe, U.S.A. and Australia. Catherine lives in Italy.

Barbara Robinson was born in Manchester where she still lives, writes and works. She writes short stories and is currently working on her first novel, Elbow Street.

Daniel Waugh was born in London and has lived in France and Yorkshire. He lives in Wimbledon with his wife, three-year-old daughter and black cat. ‘Last Call at the Rialto’ is his first short story.

Olga Zilberbourg grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia and moved to the United States at the age of seventeen. Her English-language fiction is forthcoming from World Literature Today, Feminist Studies, and California Prose Directory; stories have appeared in J Journal, Epiphany, Narrative Magazine, Printers Row, Hobart, Santa Monica Review, among others. She serves as a co-facilitator of the weekly San Francisco Writers Workshop.

Routemasters redux

Routemasters are out of retirement for the Piccadilly Line bus replacement service. The Uxbridge branch has been closed due to "shortage of trains". Hard to believe? So many of them have had wheel damage following wheels locking after braking on lines with leaves on them, that they have knocked out the whole branch and reduced the service on the Heathrow branch. Go ahead and make up your own jokes. It's not much fun for people who go to and from work along the Uxbridge line though.

Whitton Avenue this morning

New Short Stories 9 - first look

It's looking great. The book is a bit stiff because it's brand new. Here I try to flick through the pages while it does its best to resist. (Steve)

Atrocious deep potholes at bus shelters in Sudbury

Bus shelters opposite Sudbury Harrow Road station

The state of the road is dangerous for traffic, cyclists and pedestrians, with a series of very deep potholes. Not only that but the spray of rainwater and broken bits of asphalt has covered the bus shelter seats this morning and is making the bus shelters unusable. There are more potholes of a similar size just out of view in this picture. One big one is obscured by the (broken) litter bin that you see there and there are more behind the camera viewpoint.

This is a busy bus interchange area, with several stops on each side. It's the terminus for the number 18 and also serves several other bus routes, including the 92.

Ring the bells

An amusing intro to his last concert in Europe in 2013, before this dark song, which ends with the words, "When they said repent, repent, repent / I wonder what they meant? / When they said repent, repent..."



"I've seen the future brother, it is murder.
The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold
And it's overturned the order of the soul..."




I swear it happened just like this
A sigh, cry, a hungry kiss
The gates of love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
But closing time...



In his heyday, with an intro explaining how he doesn't care that the rights to this song were stolen from him

Update: Book launch and results event in Willesden

This is a copy of the newsletter that went out this evening to all our subscribers.

The shortlist is in.
The book is with the printers.
And we’re going to have a wingding.

Dear reader, thanks to those of you who entered or took an interest this year. It was a privilege and an adventure reading the submissions, of which there were 344. And it wasn’t easy narrowing them down to just ten, there was fierce contention for the places on the shortlist. Below you will see the ten stories that made it all the way. On December 8th in Willesden, Katy Darby will reveal which one has taken the Willesden Herald short story prize 2016. Cheers, Steve Moran (Editor)

RESULTS & BOOK LAUNCH

With excerpts from the short-lsited stories read by actors from Liars’ League

The Performance Space
Willesden Green Library Centre
7:30 pm – 9:00 pm
Thursday 8 December

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1298863413481275/

Cover art by Stratos Fountoulis

      SHORTLIST

• All That Remains by Rob Hawke
• The Cliffs of Bandiagara by Catherine McNamara
• Last Call at the Rialto by Daniel Waugh
• Looking for Nathalie by Susan Haigh
• Love and Hair by Olga Zilberbourg
• The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival by David Lewis
• Supersum by Barbara Robinson
• Twisted by Tracy Fells
• Undercurrents by Gina Challen
• The Volcano by Anna Lewis

supported by

Triplets Ghetto Kids & Sherrie Silver - Dancing Marimba

Triplets Ghetto Kids crew and Sherrie Silver - Dancing Marimba

For Bookings:
contact@sherriesilver.com
tripletsfoundationug@gmail.com

Standoff in Northolt

The scene at Wood End Lane this morning

Cordon ahead, blocking access to or from Whitton Avenue West

The world's media have gathered!

According to reports, there may be a disturbed person with dangerous substances, possibly a stockpile of petrol, and/or "dangerous aggressive dogs". For a proper report, try the Guardian Northolt standoff: armed police spend second night outside house.

Shortlist for the Willesden Herald short story prize 2016

Katy Darby, our judge for 2016, confirms that the shortlist for this year’s award, and therefore the stories to be published in Willesden Herald: New Short Stories 9, are as follows, in alphabetical order by title:

Title	Author
All That Remains	Rob Hawke
The Cliffs of Bandiagara	Catherine McNamara
Last Call at the Rialto	Daniel Waugh
Looking for Nathalie	Susan Haigh
Love and Hair	Olga Zilberbourg
The Mayes County Christmas Gun Festival	David Lewis
Supersum	Barbara Robinson
Twisted	Tracy Fells
Undercurrents	Gina Challen
The Volcano	Anna Lewis

(Update 3/11/2016: One story was withdrawn, and so the shortlist of ten has been updated accordingly.)

And now you will have to wait till the results event to find out who takes the prize for overall winner this year! We’re excited and can’t wait for the actor readings and the book. We’re hoping to meet some of the writers in London, if you can make it. Over the next few days, we’ll be working on the book cover art and details of the event.

Thanks to all who entered and congratulations to the shortlisted. It has been a privilege and an adventure reading the stories sent in, appreciating the painstaking art that has gone into them, and experiencing the never-failing wonder of the short story form.

supported by

Bob Dylan, Nobel laureate

Scarlet Johansson is lovely in this pseudo home movie, which gradually becomes more surreal and troubling, to one of the Nobel laureate's more melancholy tracks, from Modern Times (2006). The flickering image of a corpse on a bed and the old people with a photo album are among the saddest you could ever find in a "pop" video, and easily missed.

Cello and piano

Cello: Gautier Capuçon
Piano: Yuja Wang

Brahms Sonata No.1
26:55 Rachmaninov Sonata
01:02:51 Chopin Sonata 3rd Mvt
01:07:20 Casals Song of the Birds

St Prex Classics Festival 2013

"Get a life, bin that knife"

Knife bin

Harrow Road

"Put your weapons in our bin" - word4weapons.co.uk

A polite suggestion

Polite suggestion for Hillary Clinton in tonight's US presidential candidates' debate, forget the handshake with Trump - grab him by the balls and twist! And shimmy.

Air BnB Fund

Henrietta Rose-Innes in Geneva

This is Henrietta at the launch of the French translation of her latest novel in Geneva.

Hello - TG Lurgan

Beautiful version of Adele's "Hello" by Shannon Bryan in Gaeilge with choir and ballet, all from TG Lurgan. You can read the lyrics in Irish by following the link to YouTube.

Interview with Gene Wilder

A wonderful interview with Gene Wilder (1933 - 2016). He's great on what it was like working with Richard Pryor, amongst other things.