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On not-dancing, being a medical sanitation and hygiene executive, and featuring a two-hour playlist of my favourite Northern Soul and Tamla tracks I don’t dance, much to my wife’s annoyance. At least, I don’t dance if I can possibly help it. Sore knees, ignorance of the steps involved in the more obscure Scottish Scottisches, jigs…
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The three freemasons got on the Glasgow train at Reading, sat in front of us and immediately began talking, loudly about their Lodge and how one of them (young, frisky, wearing, of all things a Freemasonry sweat shirt) could progress through the various hierarchies of masonhood from Junior Deacon to Senior Deacon, Warden and everything…
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The softestSupermarket breadMy father’s words:“The quick and dead”Or was it “the whiter” and“The quicker”?The memories mergeThey fade and flicker“Eat it all upYou simply must”Even the blackened Pan bread crustsOn loaves baked freshOr toasted staleEnamel crackedAnd fillings failedFluorideSo it was saidLoch Katrine’s water, LeadFrom ancient pipesAnd better brushing wouldDo what no Gobstopper couldAnd solve our Dental…
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“In a progress up-stream, moreover, memory is not inseparable. Memories gather about us, but against the current memory can be let go, and the stream will carry it away.” Eric Linklater, The Dark of Summer You can listen to me reading Southside (Slight Return) by clicking on the player below, or the text follows the…
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All come to look for America: Del Amitri and me You know The Sopranos title sequence? Tony’s trip from Manhattan to Newark on the New Jersey Turnpike, soundtracked by The Alabama 3? Thirty-nine years ago I was driving a hired splitter van at the start of a journey initially to Florida, then California and back…
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The psychopathic administration of the Lochgelly tawse… Mrs Kemmet came from Hell She had a foul and smoky smell Her voice rasped like an electric drill I heard mum say that she was ill But she was assuredly alive When she hit me at the age of five The sorest blow I ever felt A…
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Text and audio, with a midsummer playlist inspired by recent reading and viewing. From recent records by Wet Leg, Leaf Rapids and Miley Cyrus to more elderly fare by AC/DC, Zeppelin and Floyd Dixon, The first Spotify link is me reading the text below, and is six minutes long. The second lasts two hours and…
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When childhood was all about risk You can listen to me reading the text below (the real me, no AI involved) by clicking on the play button above. It lasts about seven minutes. I once found a gun, propped against a tree in Fullerton Woods. It was an American air rifle designed not to fire…
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An Alfa Romeo, A Mini, a Chevrolet and a famous Aston Martin. Remake, remodel…look for the two screws underneath, and don’t lose the tyres… My first car was an Alfa Romeo Alfetta 158/159, but at first I didn’t know its name. It was red, crude, had a fading number eight in white at the rear.…
