COSTELLO by Andrew Moorhouse Late in 1978 a pal brought a new LP into the house for us to listen to. The cover showed a geeky looking guy in a charity shop suit and polka dot shirt behind a fancy camera on a tripod. The image says that he’s looking at you, he’s not asking […]
FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION WAS PERFECT by Norman Warwick It was a few weeks before we were all locked in and locked up in the lockdown. We had left the house at nine p.m. at night, for a quick trip into town, but in some ways found ourselves heading all the way back to the future ! […]
FREAKS, FROLICS AND FADING BLUES by Michael Higgins Norman Warwick’s recent article on the University Of Leeds dialect survey (Sidetracks and Detours 30 April 2020) and his brief mention of my role (chairman) in the Edwin Waugh Dialect Society has reignited something from my own past, not only of dialect but of voice and the […]
WE ARE VIRTUALLY THERE Before presenting his ´virtual´ Ribble Vallay Jazz And Blues programmes when the Festival was cancelled, Steve Bewick actually used these Sidetracks And Detours pages for a kind of triall run, and so he and I spent a fortnight or so swapping e mails and facebook messages putting together an article called […]
FINE LINES FOR FINE PRESS POETRY By Andrew Moorhouse I’ve been a bibliophile for as long as I can remember. My face, and mind, buried in books. I was a collector too; stamps in my early years then, as a teenager, the autographs of footballers and cricketers, then records and, all the while, books. If […]
MAN OF GLASS – A NOVEL FOR OUR TIMES It was only five years ago, in retirement, that Andrea took up creative writing at Open University. Shortly after subsequently joining Touchstones Creative Writing Group (TCWG) she contributed prose and poetry to a Rochdale Co-Operative initiative anthologising new work commemorating the centenary of the battle of […]
KING KONG A GIANT OF A JAZZ OPERA by Steve Bewick One of the most famous movies ever made, involving a big ape being transported to New York from an obscure island, was called King Kong and carried indelible images of the havoc wrought by the fictional creature. However, I recently came across a work […]
WORDS THAT LINGER AND WORDS WE LOSE By Norman Warwick Most of our readers will by now be familiar with the regular contributions made to these pages by Michael Higgins, who keeps us informed of current events on the literary scene around Rochdale in the North West Of England. So many of the elements of […]
THAT LITTLE RED DRESS CAME FROM … By Norman Warwick A tiny field on a cliff top in Lanzarote has played a major role in the colours and fashions worn all over the world. The colour red in all its hues and diverse cultural specificities has inspired the imaginations of artists, and subsequently fashion designers, […]
SIMON ARMITAGE: ALBUM & AMBITION By Norman Warwick I´m sure most of us, if not by now then certainly by the end of lockdown, will have dreamed of our favourite restaurants we cannot wait to dine at again, or of a concert by a favourite act we want to see, a favourite country walk we […]
