Welcome to my monthly update, where I bring you up to speed with some half-baked thoughts and general schemes, and point you towards some great content you might not have seen before. Let’s begin!

Hello hello hello thank GOD you’re here. I’VE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. I stopped e-mailing you with every single thing I wrote out of some PATHETIC, misplaced respect for my subscribers and my reading stats have fallen off a cliff and…

I don’t care at all.

It’s fiiiine.

I won’t even mention it. Everything is going to plan… I hope it’s been peaceful where you are. Why, I didn’t even hear you come in, I was so inattentive to my newsletter. Please, sit down, maybe pull up a seat, look I’ll even dust it off for you. There you are! It’s a bit wonky but if you… there! Why not have a cocktail and a little stick with cheese and pineapple from my 70s dinner party hedgehog display that I’m soloing for lunch (a hogmans lunch maybe?).

What have I been up to? Well, over at Hallory towers (I don’t even know what Mallory Towers was or is so hopefully it wasn’t something dodgy) we are moving house and doing some ‘major renovations’ I am at pains to avoid saying. Are we DIY-ing? No, it’s not enough - I don’t know, maybe someone in this g-d substack will write a word one day that us Brits can get on board without feeling we’re ‘leasing a condo’ (borrowing big bird? Could be something in that?). And no, don’t panic, we’ve paid bigger boys to do the hard bit because, frankly, I can barely hang a shelf without worrying the whole house will collapse. My wife wields the hammer in this household, but she’s got her own words to attend to with a proper poetry collection coming out in the next few months!

Despite this, I think I’ve just about managed to unleash a solid stream of scheduled writing. Am I gushin’? No, I don’t think so; I think I just got a bit over obsessed with writing for writing’s sake for a while. It was really nice to feel like I can write things again and people might read them and even enjoy them. For the first time in months I had an outlet that wasn’t my wife or exclusive WhatsApp groups that all roll their eyes at me (in complete hilarity you understand, it’s definitely all positive ocular reactions). So hopefully you’ve kept your eyes unrolled and your funny bone on speed dial.

I am still keen to grow as a writer/entertainer/unpaid blatherer/aspiring nobleman. It’s always a joy to know there’s someone at the other side of the page, and I really want people to enjoy some of this nonsense I am spending a little too much of my time on; so please do give it a go, then pipe up and say hello if there’s anything you’ve found at all humorous amongst these published bits and bobs. I rely on my audience and the sound of their mouth recommendations travelling far and wide, so if you could just mention me at some point on a social network to an ex you forgot you were entangled with or to a friend who dresses exactly like the clothes you thought you threw out last week… just point them to my shiny new website or a favourite story and we’ll take it from there!

Short Stories & Essays

• Rubber Necking - This oozed out of me in a joyous way. I mentioned in a previous correspondence that I’d been binge watching a lot of Mission Impossible because I needed to use up a free subscription. And, well, you can’t run away from your influences when they sit on your face. So I suppose if you want to write better literature, it is true that you should probably read… read the reviews out there of films of books that already exist and only watch the critically acclaimed film adaptations and copy from those. Lol, jokes. I will read a novel again one day. Just once I get to the end of this website… just one more scroll… oh it’s also homoerotic? Maybe a bit too much? Your thoughts in my ears please.

• Traitors - over on the board game blog, I shared a piece written by someone I met through a stag-do that I didn’t go on but was supposed to have been there on. I ended-up hosting a remote version of Traitors for them, and he was my guy on the ground. So if you’ve any interest in what took place that weekend, or maybe even want to feature some of your gaming experiences, take a look!

• The Secret Sudoku - I also wrote up my own enthusiasm for the wider variant sudoku multiverse if you are in any way inclined to do that. These board game blogs are mostly for the designer/enthusiasts in your lives, but you might enjoy we waxing lyrical about my love of the weird and wonderful world of sudoku youtube.

By the way, I don’t know why a common theme of my original writing has been referencing testicular cancer and warning readers to check the testicles of men they know for lumps. But do! And then see someone if they are feeling weird! Otherwise, I’m just asking you to do something professionally that you should already be doing casually and without purpose.

Wrds

Some new words or redefinitions of old words which I am pitching as an at least weekly word a day. For word lovers and word despisers alike. Would be approved by Olivander Fry, Stephen’s brother

• Writer’s Gush (substack) - I challenged myself to find a better way of describing the opposite of writer’s block, which in a Substack note I hilariously labelled ‘Writer’s Diarrhea’ but aside from being a nightmare to spell, it was a disgusting image.¹ I did some deliberation and explored words and this was the best I came up with - though this article is unique as it has its own internal glossary within it, so there is a quantity of words in there worth a look at if you like that sort of thing… Do you like that sort of thing? Could be a problem either way tbh, best get that checked out

• Upthumb (substack) - another joyful little accident. I don’t know what possessed me to want to change the well thumbed ‘thumb-up’, but it was reminiscent of something I did in my book that I don’t do so much now, which is take already existing concepts and rebrand them, or else the opposite, which is to change the meaning of an already existing word.²

• Butt-Bought (substack) - this is based on a true story, where (we think) I accidentally bought a used version of ‘Pop-up Pirate’ on vinted via a butt dial, but never cancelled it because both my wife and I thought the other had bought it through our shared account and would eventually explain themselves. So obviously the experience needed to be captured through words, but I didn’t have the lexicon. And THEN I stumbled upon the idea that booty-call is the same construction of noun for bum plus an unrelated verb and a bizarre thicc double dictionary corner was born.

Chapters

These are extracts from my previously released Alternative Wordbook, and in future months, other to be released written works.

• The Letter E - this was the essay on letters that made me start to wonder if there was something in this. It’s a very egalitarian letter I think, so generous with its uses and time for us mere mortals. Do other people talk like this in your life?

Quick Recommendations

What have I been watching? We’re watching Severance week by week! An actual show we are up to date with, absolutely mad. And we love it. But it makes me miss the OA (just watch it now if you haven’t!) and what was about to be with it if Netflix had given it a damn third season… We are also enjoying No Good Deed ** which has Lisa Kudrow proving once again that she is the best **F·R·I·E·N·D. My wife even tells me I have a passable Ray Romano impression, but I imagine most people do but nice to know I’ve still got something going for me!

What have I been playing? Animal Well has finally fallen into my lap. I thoroughly love a metroidvainia, and especially this new breed of thinky ones, which people are calling ‘metroidbrainia’. There’s a really cool aesthetic and apparent simplicity to Animal Well which made it a breeze to play and a lot of fun to explore and keep exploring. However, it goes deep after you complete the game and I don’t think I’ll ever have the stomach to keep playing a game as much as some folk do, so I’m happy to start watching the videos soon enough. I knew I would probably like this game but it takes me such a long time to find any time to play games these days, but a lil gaming voucher from my wife and a steam sale meant my steam deck got some extra use this month!

What have I been listening to? Trolls soundtracks. There’s a fun new trend that’s at least a decade old I might add, of forcing children to listen to music their parents’ parents liked by creating a jukebox musical around old classics that people like. It’s been very good at getting our eldest child (4) to broaden her horizons, but my my my has the morning drive become Trolls obsessed. All three of them. Thankfully they are quite musically considerate, it’s almost designed as a music education at points. And its basically non violent and about people with fun hair and glitter, so of course it’s a winner in this household!

Anyway, saying goodbye and waving out the window while you reverse! Please don’t forget to share, and let me know if you fancy me trying to read out loud some of this rubbish too. I’m still waving, even when you can’t see me anymore in your rearview mirror…³

‘How does a mathematician solve constipation? with a pencil. To which you then follow up by asking: ‘How does a mathematician solve diarrhoea? With a calculator *mic drop* *apologises to tech guys for dropping the equipment, then looks nervously at the staff behind the bar so that he will still be allowed back another night*