A Short Tale in Honour of Transgender Awareness Week – 2022
Edit: (Monday 21 November 2022) I put a script to bed during Transgender Awareness Week. My original intent was to highlight two points; first, trans people have existed forever (as opposed to garbage far-right takes that we’re an invention of ‘post-modernists’ or ‘cultural Marxists’, invented to undermine traditional society – and other similar dumb things […]
Revenge of the Tallysticks
This week I’m starting with a quick anecdote. Please bear with me, this is not going to be a regular thing. Nor is the general tone of this Tale regular. I thought I was making something short and a little strange, to give me extra time on the last couple of episodes for 2022 – […]
Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?
When trying to imagine the lives of Robert Hart, Thomas Willets, Bob Farmer and Fred Payne on April 18th 1943, I get a certain picture in my mind’s eye. Four teenaged schoolboys from Stourbridge in the British Midlands, head off on an adventure into the woods – free from the encumbrances of adult supervision. I […]
The Wall Street Coup, Part Two
Hi all the following is Part Two of a Two Part Tale. Part One is Here If I may, folks, I’d like to resume this Tale by doing something totally irresponsible. Before we come back to General Butler, I want to take us on a digression which has no great bearing on, or relation to […]
The Wall Street Coup – Part One
Hi all, this is part one of a two-parter. The Podcast episodes typically run between 20 – 25 minutes. I expect this one will take over an hour to tell. This week’s tale opens on a ‘Hooverville’ – a makeshift village of the dispossessed; all in attendance hit hard by the Great Depression of 1929. […]
Oliver
Hi all, this week is probably the second, and final unplanned episode. If you’re curious, the new day job is going fine. Trigger warning on this one, it gets gory at times. I have an image in my mind of Josiah Wilkinson, that may not be entirely accurate. More a whole scenario than […]
The Sin Eater, Wizard of Mauritius & ‘Mr Good Day’ – Three Work Tales
Hi all, I’m starting a new role at my day job, and seeing it is something in a whole new field, with possible homework to do – I’m putting a couple of the more content heavy tales on hold till I’ve settled in. I was planning on podcasting a couple of older blog posts in […]
The Many Deaths of Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller was a trombonist, composer, band leader and late 1930s – early 40s musical icon whose work is utterly impenetrable to me. Not that I mean I can’t dissect it, and regurgitate some horrific approximation as background music (podcast listeners, much of the music this episode is stolen from Mr Miller) I mean in […]
Update: When The Swallows Come Back to Capistrano…
Hey all just a quick update. I’ve got this week’s blog post written, and the corresponding podcast episode recorded. I’m in the midst of putting the final mix, and background music together tonight. It might arrive a little late (Thurs, maybe Friday?) due to a couple of things I’ve got going on at the moment. […]
The Ghost & The Darkness
The human history of Kenya, were we to know it fully, would certainly be one of the longer histories out there. On the continent’s East, below the ‘Horn of Africa’, certain simian ancestors of ours, such as homo habilis and homo erectus have been found to have thrived there. Fossil records in the region show […]
The Infernal Machine
Trigger Warning, This Tale discusses gun violence. If an account of a mass shooting is likely to upset, it’s fine to give this one a miss. I’ll be back in a fortnight with a tale of Kenyan wildlife and other things. This week’s Tale begins on the Boulevard du Temple; in Paris, France. The date, […]
The Georgia Guidestones
Edit: 8 July 2022 – Hi there I can see a lot of traffic coming to my blog/podcast looking for this post at the moment. The following piece was originally written, on the fly over a couple of hours in late November 2020. It’s not as in depth as I’d like it to be but […]
The Childe of Hale – a Short Tale
The following is just a quick blog post I threw together this morning, needing something for the week – and having recently tied of a bunch of standby posts to planned podcast episodes for the 2023 season. In 1617 Gilbert Ireland, Sheriff of Lancashire, was presented before King James I of England. He’d made the […]
Spencer Perceval
Trigger Warning: The following episode discusses gun violence – particularly the assassination of a head of state. Note for the readers, I’ll get a blog only post up tomorrow – It’s Matariki in New Zealand (Maori New Year) so I have a day off to write. Today’s tale is set in foyer of the British […]
Update: Just cause I haven’t done one for a while…
Hey everyone, just dropping a quick update today. I hope wherever you are reading from life is treating you well in these crazy times. I’ve currently put both the blog and podcast more or less on autopilot for a month while I work on the next block of posts/episodes. I’m hoping if I can get […]
The Carrington Event
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden Strange, magical things were afoot in Boston, Massachusetts on September 2nd 1859. It is 9.30 am at the telegraph office on 31 State Street […]
Bearcat
Hey all I’m ‘taking a break’ for a month – well, more accurately going into writing and recording mode for a month. On the podcasts front I’m set to release two ‘from the vaults’ episodes – The Bagradas Dragon (blogged last year) and a heavily edited Carrington Event (from back in 2019 on the blog)… […]
The Old Man of The Mountain
Hey all this is the third and final instalment on the Assassins. If you’re coming to this first, part one is here – part two here. I want to start this episode with a confession – when I say the Mongols brought our tale of the Persian Assassins to an end, in a sense they […]
The Mongols are Coming!
Hi there this is part two of what will probably be a three part tale. If you haven’t checked out The Cult of Hassan-i Sabbah first, click here. To unravel this part of this tale, we needs must flash forward 96 years, then work back a ways. We left off in 1124. Hassan-i Sabbah, had […]
The Cult of Hassan-i Sabbah
This post/podcast episode is part one of a two (edit: probably Three) part Tale. I’ll be dropping part two in a fortnight. There is a shadowy tale from the medieval Near East that persists in the modern imagination. At some time in the 11th Century a heretical cult arose in the mountains of northern Iran […]
Alas, poor Tycho…
Hey all, I had something completely new in the works for both the blog and podcast this week… owing to a few things happening in my day job (a pending corporate acquisition had me messing with my CV the other night. It had been years since I’d last dusted that particular file off)I chose to […]
The Bottle Conjuror
Today’s tale is set on the night of January 16th 1749; the setting, The Haymarket Theatre – on London’s West End. Originally built in 1720, on a site formerly occupied by a pub and a gunsmith’s, there was something of ‘the little theatre who could’ about the place. While the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden and […]
Beyond the Archway…
Content Warning: This episode discusses Pseudocide – the act of faking one’s own death. I also cut and slashed at this script considerably in the podcast editing process. I think some parts which still work here didn’t in that format this week. This week we start with a brief detour to Waitakere, New Zealand – […]
… A Thousand Words?
Hey all, the podcast episode I’m running this week is from the back catalog of blog posts – so I have new, blog only content this week. Today we’re going to look at a couple of famous photos – cartooned of course (cause it’s what I do). If I’ve yet to get back to part […]
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Tales of History and Imagination 