By Bread Alone Oh, you off, Mrs. Scragg? Yes, very nice job you’ve made of the lounge for tonight, thank you. Not quite six, is it? Just be a dear and do the potatoes while I finish the table. A dozen wretched napkins to fold yet. What a life. An afternoon under a hot dryer, […]
Heads in the Sand
Heads in the Sand Nigel Clayton was found guilty of 32 counts of abusing young boys over 40 years in May 2021. I’ve since bumped into a few old friends who tell me they knew Clayton, most saying they were shocked because Clayton always came across as a kind and friendly man. There are however […]
Long Weekend
Long Weekend It was a long weekend for me, reflecting on the inept justice system of this country that seems to favour criminals over their victims. I had the chance to talk to another two of the victims and the pain they feel is palpable. All of us need closure on this. I would say […]
Eleventh Hour
Eleventh Hour It’s 4.15pm on Thursday 1st July, and I have just received notification from the police that the sentencing on Friday 2nd July has been postponed. This is because the probation office has not yet been able to formally assess Nigel Clayton. After six weeks of his being found guilty. I heard the words […]
Croydon Crown Court
Croydon Crown Court On Friday July 2nd Nigel Clayton will be sentenced for the 32 counts out of 35 charged at a six week trial back in May 2021. I went back to the court a few days ago to reflect on aspects of the trial that have stayed with me, and responded to some […]
Under The Clock
UNDER THE CLOCK ‘Sorry I’m late, Mum.’ ‘Sorry I’m late, Ducks.’ ‘Child Minder didn’t turn up.’ ‘It’s such a job getting buses.’ ‘I had to park Nicky with Ann Thomas.’ ‘You don’t know what it’s like.’ ‘She wasn’t very pleased, but I didn’t know what to do.’ ‘Stuck out there at the back of […]
The Worst Of All Possible Crimes
The Worst Of All Possible Crimes I’ve been working hard on the updated version of my first book ‘You Can’t Hurt Me,’ which has changed the anonymous names of the guilty to their actual names, whilst continuing to protect its innocent characters with the anonymity guaranteed them in the first version. There is a new […]
Back and Busy
Back and Busy I’ve been back in the UK since March 1st. My wonderful foster mother died on January 28th 2021 and I had been stuck in Australia due to Covid and couldn’t get back to say goodbye to her before she passed away. It has been something of a roller coaster of emotions for […]
You Can’t Hurt Me
You Can’t Hurt Me To call myself a writer and know that there is a book out there with my name on it is never anything I could have imagined earlier in my life. If someone had told me then that I would have a book published, I would have laughed at them. As a […]
The Bogeyman (Covid-19 version)
THE BOGEYMAN Look – just had a tip, sugar will be short, Bread next week, take a fiver from my drawer; Get everything you can, empty the shops, Stack up our cupboards, fill the freezer up. Must have our sugar, bread can`t do without, Must have our warm clothes, smart clothes – no holes, […]
Independent bookshops: Lutyens and Rubinstein
Lutyens and Rubinstein This is a fascinating and successful experimental bookshop – two literary agents have committed their money, expertise and writing lists to create a bookshop in Notting Hill, directly opposite Notting Hill community church by the Kitchen and Pantry in Kensington Park Road. It enjoys the expected combination of antique markets versus bohemian […]
Independent bookshops: A Zitebooks tour of this important, diminishing resource
Hatchards Hatchards is an independent specialist bookshop in Piccadilly founded by John Hatchard in 1797, located next to Fortnum and Mason, and opposite the Royal Academy. It has now quietly become part of the Waterstone’s group, but this doesn’t seem to have affected its unique grandiloquent feel. It is London’s oldest bookshop, the occupants having […]
Neverland
When I first began writing, I had friends who were painters, and I always said, `If you paint a picture, you can at least stick it up on a wall in your home; for your friends and relatives, and anyone else who comes to your house, to see.` My paper story I put in […]
Dear Doctor
or… WRONG DIAGNOSIS Dear Doctor, `You should not have told your daughter,` you said. `She’s best out of it,` you said. Well done. Do you realise what you caused? What you were saying? I came to you because of marital problems. Even concerned for the husband who was causing so much misery. `Is it […]
Lindsay Pickton
I knew a young teenage boy called Lindsay Patterson when I had the first two girls and did not plan any more children. But I did think the name Lindsay went well with our surname. I had never heard of it as a girls’ name. It was a Scottish town name, a Scottish clan name, there […]
The Dark Agenda
We live in a world where success has become a more vague concept. Some would say that it has a declining appeal. To become successful is to surrender your identity to the world, something scorned in the digital age. Fame has its price. A Dionysian feeding frenzy is likely to send you to the tabloids […]
Lunch for the Needy
I am at the church which I sometimes attend, mostly for their social events such as a Harvest Suppermeal or one of their discussion groups and courses. These meals, For the Homeless, are run by a local charity, and churches in the area take their turn to be host, about twice a year. It works […]
How I Came To Write ‘Reasons’
How I came to write the title story of my collection of short stories, Reasons. While studying for my Masters Degree in Creative Writing, I was fortunate to have Paul Bailey, novelist and critic, as my tutor for one option. The assignment was to write a 500 word story and I was unsure how to […]
Good Fairy, Bad Fairy
how I came to write Good Fairy, Bad Fairy For a period of time, I was separated from my youngest daughter. We could no longer live together. It was to do with my life situation which is described in my prose writing at the beginning of the Poetry Collection Windows. She was at a Sixth Form […]
The Admirers
HOW I CAME TO WRITE THE ADMIRERS I once had a neighbour who always had four cats. If one died, got run over or met a similar fate, she straightaway got another. One day I was in her house and her cats were all around us. Her man friend, Kim, was there too. I said […]
No Bananas
No Bananas When we had just returned from a two week’s holiday, my husband of a year – and you can see why it was not much longer – asked me, ‘Have we got any bananas?’ ‘Where would we have got them from?’ I replied. ‘Before we went away,’ he said. Holiday. Summer holiday. Like – […]
Roll On Tomorrow
Roll on Tomorrow Of all my four children, only my one son has an English degree like me. Like me, he loves words and language, and people, and he is very funny, in a quaint, dry sort of way. One day, as a very young teenager, he said, ‘I like the idea of the sort […]
Making Whoopee
Making Whoopee Lovelorn Laura was determined to turn her life around – with the help of a little lyrical loveliness. by Pamela Pickton “Oh, dear, what can the matter be?” sang the music as the keep-fit class bounced their bottoms on the floor. And, “Oh, dear, could we all fatter be?” sang Laura to herself. She had […]
The Books You Might Have Missed – Zitebooks Literary Review
Our 2017 Zitebooks Christmas feature is our response to questions featured in Saturday’s Guardian’s Literary Review Supplement. Hope you enjoy them. James Goddard The book I am currently reading Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Someone at my book group suggested it last month as an ‘extra’ read. Ony about one third of the way through […]
Christmas Greetings
`Posh people have better cards than most of us.` I remarked to my friend.`Yes, they do. Because they have rich friends.` Are they bigger? Mostly. Shinier? Or just of better quality material? However pretty, even beautiful, ours look like humble cottages next to Mansions Tall. The pretty, the beautiful, the funny, the well-crafted home-made. Still somehow scrappy next […]
Unmasked
UNMASKED My last magazine story – A Love Like This – is true. Though I called it The Love Seat. It all happened much longer ago than five years. The two separate episodes, with two different partners, were twenty-five and ten years ago. Not the stuff magazine stories are made of, I thought. As I […]
Dynasty
My mother’s mother was born a Peircy and a distant relative, Brian Piercy, told me that anyone with either of these spellings is a Percy. He has done 40 years of research into the Percys. My great grandfather was cut off without a penny, as they say, for marrying beneath him. Though my mother always […]
Blessed Babies
I wonder if anyone else has ever laughed, as I have, at that poem by Eleanor Farjeon called, `When I Live In A Cottage`? The poet lists what idyllic things she would like to have in her dream cottage, including dogs, cows, goats, apple trees, and rosebushes, cats with kittens, and beehives. `And one blessed baby […]
Genesis and Catastrophe
Woman created everything there is. Who else could have? Does she not make everything? The dinner, the home. Conceive, carry, give birth to the baby, then rear it? She made land first in the hope that good would come out of it, and sustenance for her. But then she divided the land into smaller bits, […]
Neighbours
Oh, she couldn’t have put it in the bin, could she? Not in the massive landfill bin – outside, in the flats’ private car park, next to the separate bins for cardboard and things. How could you possibly ever find anything in there? But, yes, she had emptied her kitchen bin out there this morning. […]