charles barrow's writing

I'll always take a moment to stop and read a blue plaque, when I see one affixed to a house or building, to see who is being honoured, or remembered. Who once lived, or stayed, visited briefly, or otherwise bestowed their glorious presence upon said house or building. By definition, the plaques memorialise eminent people; the great and the good (but hopefully the slightly shady too), otherwise, what's the point? Who would care about a plaque dedicated to someone who achieved nothing of note? Maybe their close family would care, but the rest of us? Probably not. And what I would be curious to know is the minimum amount of time an eminent personage needs to remain in a building before that building can claim bragging rights and raise a plaque dedicated to that personage. The case of Charles Dickens is the reason I ask this question. I have spent years, all my adult life, living in various towns along the south coast of England, and almost all of them have had a blue plaque dedica

I do try to always look on the bright side, but sometimes it's just plain hard to do. It's almost a given that January will be dark, gloomy, and generally parsimonious with its blessings. It's the same every year, and that's fine, I know that, so I just keep my head down, grit my teeth and get through it.   So when I step into February, I usually feel that I've turned a corner. This year however, February had some shocking weather up its sleeve. It was the wettest February weather in over 250 years. Constant downpours, drizzle and mizzle. But I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, if you live in the UK, you'll have had many an outing cancelled, many a shoe spring a leak, many an umbrella turn turtle and die. February this year was very hazy and disappointing. I was very excited last autumn when Bernie Taupin published his memoir, Scattershot - Life, Music, Elton and Me. It went straight onto my TBR (To Be Read) list. If you aren't aware Bernie is El

The weather remains consistently dismal at the moment. By my reckoning it's rained for at least 48 days straight this month, and we've still got a week of wet weather ahead of us, according to forecasters. I have managed to get outside, despite the rain, for walks around the block, along the seafront, into town, any walk that gives me exercise and gets me some fresh air is good in my book. And speaking of books, what this weather is perfect for is staying indoors, on the sofa, nose buried in a good read. I noticed this poster, below, on a visit to my favourite second-hand bookshop in town - Oxfam Books. I don't know if this is a new initiative from them, I've not been aware of it before, but I'm definitely here for it. Love Stories is the theme for this month. I don't generally go for romance as a genre, but I'm happy if a book I'm reading contains a love story, as long as it's not the main focus of the plot. Yesterday, I finished Wide Sargasso Sea b

Inevitably, it happened. There was a flaw in my plan and someone elbowed their way through it, carrying the book I was reading, and walked on out the library door with it. You'll have to read my last post to make complete sense of the sentence above, but that will only take you a couple of minutes, so I'll wait..... Yes, a couple of weeks ago, someone borrowed the copy of Real Life, by Brandon Taylor, that I was reading my way through at the library. When I discovered it was missing from the T section on its usual shelf I hunted high and low, across all the display shelves where I had found it once before, but to no avail. It was gone, someone had borrowed it. I checked the on-line catalogue. Yep. It was confirmed. It was out on a three week loan. Damn. Still, I had a Plan B, in the form of about ten thousand other books I could pick up instead. I had promised myself to read a Zadie Smith in this very situation, but there was only one of hers on the shelf and it wasn't one

As reported in my last post, I am enduring a self-imposed book buying ban, while I take the opportunity to actually read some of the books I actually already own. It's been 38 days now since I last bought a book. It's been tough. I have been into a bookshop (looking for a calendar) and I've been into several charity shops (same) and I came out of all of them having not bought a book. Quite the victory for a book addict. But before you hand me a medal you should know that I have found a way to bend the rules of this challenge, my own rules. I did create a couple of caveats to this 'not buying books at the moment' challenge. It was that or get arrested for shoplifting a book from Waterstones in a moment of madness. I am in possession of a couple of book tokens at the moment, gifted to me a while back, and I reasoned that it wouldn't be breaking any rules if I acquired books using these vouchers. After all, someone else had parted with the money to buy them, and so

I watch a lot of Youtube videos, or more accurately, BookTube videos - BT being the corner of YT where people discuss books (naturally); what they own, what they've read, what they intend to read. It's full of reviews, recommendations, warnings (sometimes), encouragement, and interesting, fun people that I enjoy spending time with. It also has a broad timetable of monthly events that viewers can choose to join. I've spoken previously about the short story theme in September, and the Victorian literature in October or, so called, Victober, both of which I chose to take part in this year. The upcoming event for December is Remember December, during which viewers/readers are encouraged to re-read a book they once read and can't recall anything about. I have a long list of those. I'm not sure I'll take part in this event, other than incidentally, firstly because I want to get festive and read some Christmas stories in December, as I also like to get festive by watch