And if you didn’t get the film reference in the title, shame on you.
A few weeks back I was interviewed by Darius Namdaran, director of the BulletMap Academy, for his Dyslexia Explored podcast. He got in touch because he had come across one of my posts on this website about the joys of dyslexia (yes, there are some).
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A lot has happened since I started making my temperature blanket back in January. We’ve had a couple of wee cold snaps, a couple of mini-heatwaves, and the small matter of a global pandemic and consequent lockdown.
I’ve also, finally, finished watching all four series of Blake’s 7. Progress slowed with lockdown because everyone was in the house all the time, and I’m the only one who enjoys Blake’s 7, or sci-fi in general. However, with the easing of restrictions, I found a bit more time and finished the fourth series – although I did have to work up the emotional energy to watch Orbit and then Blake, the ante-penultimate (an underused word) and final episodes respectively. Having seen them before, I know they pack a bit of a punch.
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My latest piece in Premier’s Christianity magazine is about the effects on children of coronavirus and associated lockdowns around the world. If you think things are a bit pants here, what happens when you add in war, famine, pestilence and other assorted horsemen of the apocalypse? (And isn’t 2020 the most apocalyptic year you’ve ever experienced?? It certainly is for me.)
Continue readingThis post is about one of my many niche interests, specifically that gentle satire on the English middle class: Peppa Pig. You might think that this is just a children’s cartoon about a family of pigs but you would be wrong. It is laugh-out-loud funny in its dissection of human foibles and frailty through the medium of stylized animal drawings.
Continue readingVery quick post to say that I have a limerick about lockdown published in On the Premises, a fiction e-zine I subscribe to. And they paid actual money, which is always helpful in these straitened times. If you want to read it, and the other winning entries, click below. If not, move on with your life.
It seems quite appropriate that, just after the statue of a man who profited from the slave trade is pulled down, my article on modern-day slavery comes out. I started writing it way before the incident that kicked off the recent protests, of course, and even before lockdown (although it’s been edited to reflect the new situation) but the problem has not gone away.
Continue readingThere are more slaves now than there have ever been.
Some of you may have virtually come along to session five of Virtual Noir at the Bar when I was doing a reading from my unpublished novel The Sarcophagus Scroll. Virtual Noir at the Bar has been running all through lockdown, and 100 authors have taken part to date.
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If you so much as glance through the old posts of this blog, you’ll notice that I have a fair few interests and hobbies, from the domestic to the arcane. There’s crochet, of course (the temperature blanket is coming along beautifully) and baking, which under lockdown has got a bit out of control. I suggested baking some biscuits today and my sister looked at me in horror. “But we’ve already got crumpets, potato scones and flapjack!” I think the problem is that people aren’t eating fast enough 😉
This Wednesday, 29th April 2020, I’ll be reading from my unpublished novel The Sarcophagus Scroll at Virtual Noir in the Bar.
Noir at the Bar is a crime fiction event that used to take place in pubs in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Newcastle, but has now moved to Zoom, like everything else in the world. Continue reading
K C Murdarasi 