Happy 2nd birthday, blog!

Looking Back at Cuttings and Proteas: a log entry about growth and development Two years and 217 posts ago the BeadedQuill blog was born. On 15th June 2013, after decades of hiding my fiction writing in notebooks, I decided to share it with the wider world. To my 123 signed-up blog followers, I say a

Don’t Waste Paris

Don’t waste the joy of new places on absent sources of heartache. Don’t Waste Paris on a Broken Heart.

Revisiting the Octopus

Ah, this is a good one from the archives: Tied up in 8 Tentacles of a Goal Octopus. As an update – I don’t yet live in my wooden house with a deck overlooking a lake. For travel in 2013, I took the train to Buckingham for Christmas. As a day trip I went out

A quiet night preludes the festivities

‘Tis the night before I head off to find Christmas. with an inflatable bed and homemade biscuits. All through this lodging there is hardly a clatter; only Depeche Mode on my laptop and my landlady’s patter. To the front door she shuffles and hooks up the chain. Yesterday’s outside, while we’re bolted in. 22/12/13 —

Two Books, Four Poems, Sore Legs and Arms

  This last weekend I did lots of kicks. Yesterday, I did enough repetitions of cloud hands to wake up with aching arms.  Are you ready for Christmas? I am far from, but did issue my second book of 2013 in time for its November deadline. Preview Emily’s Poems for Modern Boys here. Shining in

Every morning, because it’s wonderful to watch

scrumpled dashes dots and lines between the tracks 09:33 2 mins until the train arrives for Kennington via Charing + On the tracks far from my reach the scrumpled ball of paper speaks: I am a poem between the tracks. — I am quite conscientious about dating my scribbles and working notes. It is a

The Character Building

the Shard in tall majestic glints the architecture of its age success of Empire State and iconic like   afloat in grand isolation there is also an island set on a raft of mahogany loss   a wall hit and under constant repair encircles the floor about which nobody knows a floor matted with digested

I don’t work for you (or Modern Frustrations)

I called in once: Please confirm. I called again: No email yet. I came in-store to sign your forms You took the card and swiped it then. I called in once: Please confirm, the booking’s through. Yes, yes, of course. Someone will be in touch. I wait a day, No news, no word. This is

Solutrean Hypothesis

For a season, transient over the ice-pack, her bundle regarded hope while his averred fealty. Both solicited the dragon’s gate yet overlooked the soft pearl which sustains the breath and pulse of para-reality. — The Solutrean hypothesis proposes that the first people to settle in the North Americas travelled from the landmass now known as Europe. It

Don’t Waste Paris on a Broken Heart

A blue sky over Notre Dame Advice for *   Don’t waste Paris on a broken heart next to the Cathedral Notre Dame where yellow-petalled violas squint their purple eyes at you shadowing their beds as you turned: his hands on her, embracing on the Seine.   From April 2012 — Who takes the bus