On Friday I had a poem published on Poetry Shelf for NZ Music Month. It was the first time Paula Green has taken submissions. I wrote the poem over the weekend for the submission and was delighted for it to be selected. Pretty cool to see one of my works alongside people like Harry Rickets,…
Category: Life
Food: Black Pudding
So, I have fulfilled a long-time goal. I first watched River Cottage in the 90’s back when there were 3 or 4 TV channels and the modern generation of celebrity cookery was just starting to pick up steam in the wake of Keith Floyd’s hangover. My late aunty Ann alerted me to Hugh Fearnly Whittingstal….
Life: Grief
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire” Charles Bukowski Grief is a really big word. It is enveloping, it is debilitating, it is lethal, it is a brief interlude on the trail of life, it is inconsequential, it is defining, it wells up and physically stops us from functioning, and it…
Food: Bread and Butter Pickle
As a child I adored my maternal grandmother’s bread and butter pickle. No picnic was complete without bread and butter pickle and cheddar sandwiches, the Monday cold cut meal that followed Sunday’s roast hogget using the remains always featured a jar. While I don’t have her recipe this one seems pretty close. While my grandmother…
Life: Te Suburbia
Machine Gun Vignettes I His agapanthus were the best in the village. His shining pride and joy. Retired 10 years his days were spent tending the garden. Precision was his game. A ruler was used at sowing. His petunias sparkled. On his berm a row of bright plastic signs prohibited any excretion of excrement or…
Travel: In Search of Mutton Pie
Oamaru, July 2025 I rise after a night drinking with Michael O’Brien in his cottage. Last time I did so I bore the brunt of a mortal liver the next day, every footstep was a lash of self-flagellation. Today though I am buoyed by the fact that I showed relative self-control the night before. My…
Travel: Crisp And Clean
“Crisp and clean. No caffeine.” RZA , Coffee and Cigarettes Our jetlag wrenched us from sleep at 2am. In an act of cruelty that frankly jeopardizes Canada’s inclusion in the commonwealth there was no coffee or tea making facilities in the hotel room. I took to twitter to voice my anguish and was told that…
The Session 147: Morse
Two of my passions go hand in hand. I am an evangelical proponent of both traditional British beer and murder mystery fiction. While they intersect a lot, the writing of Colin Dexter is perhaps where the Venn diagram is at its most pure. Dexter’s Chief Inspecter Morse is an amalgam of Dexters own passions and…
Life: This too shall pass- the beer that changed my life.
“این هم بگذرد in npam begzard And this too shall pass.” Persian proverb. In early 2025 the partners of North End Brewing Co are diverting paths and founding brewer Kieran Haslett-Moore is leaving the company amid a restructure. A new brewer is being sought. Twelve years ago, the first commercial batch of the beer now…
Travel: Full Scottish – Edinburgh
“Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,Great chieftain o the puddin’-race!Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,Painch, tripe, or thairm:Weel are ye wordy o’ a graceAs lang’s my arm.” Robert Burns I woke early and tried to book tickets to Edinburgh Castle on my phone. The webstore kept crashing, so I gave up and switched to…
Raise the Dawn 