Perhaps we don’t think that writing follows trends, but according to @thebookseller (yes, I’m gradually getting my head around the twittertariat) the zeitgeist is moving towards joy. Agents and publishers are looking for manuscripts that deal with that particular emotion….
Category: Cultural Life
A series of novels about Allendale
Haddaway man! But, well, aye. Really. There are some parts of village life that a reportorial journal/diary simply cannot reach. So to try to encompass the missing gaps, a series of fictional novels is now live and available on the…
A timely, contributed poem
I’m so delighted to provide Marjorie Anderson space for her lovely poem, a piece of work that set our Creative Writing class a-tingle last term. This poem, for me, develops the whole sense of the year ahead, and the year…
Nine Lessons and Carols
It may not quite be up to the musical standard of the choristers at King’s College, Cambridge, but the annual carol service at St. Cuthbert’s this evening at 6pm is still a delightful highlight of this festive season. The church…
Ageing: a work in progress
These past two weekends, the 7th and 8th and 14th and 15th of December, three local artists presented a gallery full (the ACA Gallery in the Allenheads Heritage Centre opposite the Armstrong engine building) of art on the subject of…
Rehearsals for the ‘Peter Pan’-tomime in full swing
One of the things I always thought this diary could document is the cyclicity of events: how things are developed one year, and then re-developed on and into the coming year. The cycle of life in these parts, essentially. So…
Rural Touring: Highlights North, at Allendale Village Hall
In what must be a truly remarkable tour de force, a one-person show arrives at Allendale Village Hall this evening, courtesy of Highlights North, the Rural Touring facilitator which contributes a great variety of arts and culture to remote village…
Music in the key of life . . .
I had a lovely chat yesterday with June Welch who embarked on a life-changing career shift in her mid-forties, to embrace the learning and teaching of music. As she says, “For me, teaching is always about learning, both for the…
Allendale Bell Tower
Shirley Brown writes in with a lovely and fulsome description of the bell ringers at St. Cuthbert’s: “An article in the Hexham Courant in September 2019 was headed ‘Tower of Friendship and Team Spirit’. I think this sums up nicely…
The Joy of Editing
I don’t come by editing naturally. Rather, I fall in love with the words as they emerge, and feel loathe to mess with them thereafter. Always have done. But I learned, as a graduate student in the biomedical sciences, that…