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Bother! Trouble!! Emergency!!!

S P Moss has a family background in the RAF, and loves classic children’s adventure stories every bit as much as classic cars, planes and kids’ books so, when she won the Earlyworks Press novels for children competition back in 2011, we knew we were in for some good, old fashioned fun. The Bother The…
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Hibakusha – never forget

Joycelyn Simms’ extraordinary poems about the Hibakusha – those affected (in so many terrible ways) by the nuclear detonations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inspired by ‘a thousand paper cranes and lanterns floating on the river Ota’, and by John Hersey’s book, Hiroshima – and then, when the poem Grapple Y was published by the…
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Fish heads are still flying

It’s a contentious thing, being a feminist. There are always plenty of vocal people wanting to loudly disapprove of you. Not least of the obstacles that need to be addressed is that of class. I read a story recently about a woman who told those less well off than herself to save money by cooking…
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Beware the ideas twisters

Here comes another government consultation. I do suspect our government do this whenever they’re scared of making big decisions themselves. This is a ***long read*** but I hope it will help me, as well as you, if you’re reading it, to produce clear-headed responses to the government’s latest, as well as to some of those…
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The Key to the World Beyond The Gate

There couldn’t possibly be another Timothy’s Gate novel, could there? I mean, in the first book, Timothy found the magical world of Challenrah behind a mysterious gate in the garden of the Grey Lady pub, near where he used to live – but now, he’s moved right across the world and will never see the…
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Coming back to Holst

I always do. In the last few years, politics and COVID and financial troubles left little time for contemplating music but sooner or later, it had to happen. I sat down and listened to Mars, and thought yes, that’s how it is, and felt better. Then I listened to Jupiter, and rallied my internal troops…
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My pronouns are I/me

For most of my life, feminists have called upon women to resist stating their ‘gender’ in work situations, to discourage sex harassment and/or discrimination. Many public authority jobs used to be advertised and processed in a sex-blind and race-blind manner, to avoid discrimination in recruitment. Then someone decided the way to check for and correct…
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Apparently, we came out of nowhere

(in case you’ve forgotten, ‘nowhere’ is ‘the real world’) Today, the BBC published an article about lesbians, about how same-sex attracted people feel when pushed to accept ‘gender’ instead of ‘sex’, and see their clubs, social sites and groups filling up with members of the opposite sex as a result. Objecting to that, according to…
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To the person handing out leaflets outside FiLiA in Portsmouth

Was it the ‘good cop, bad cop’ approach? The kiddies filled the square with obscenities and threats while you did nice and polite leafletting by the conference entrance? Well, maybe you really did mean well and had no idea what they were doing so just in case that is so, here’s a polite reply to…
