Ted is an ageing vagrant & wonders why artist Frank is being kind to him. In Ted's world “Nobody does nuffink for nuffink” so what is Frank after? The events that follow Ted's last Christmas are strange indeed & challenge Ted's self-belief.

And did Frank have it in mind all along?

Ted witnesses a transformation which alters his sense of self. Then Council workers arrive in full hazard kit...

A story about identity & being seen & the effects of disability & being different.

1649. England in the grip of “the Enemies of Joy”.

Zeb remembers sailing with the first explorers to round Cape Horn. Their trials, perils & delights. Exotic fruits & a Paradise Island of song & dance & naked beauty. And alas, the shameful conclusion of that brave venture, a voyage “as new & savage as if we was sailin' to the Moon” that changed his vision of what life can be.

Calling on contemporary logs of 16th & 17th century mariners, this story remembers First Peoples affected or destroyed by European exploration, & recalls a significant moment in the birth of monopoly capitalism.

Len Tuffin, a Roma gypsy, is arrested in
Epping Forest for bare-knuckle boxing.
In HMP Pentonville he must survive being a
marked man, but those three months change
his life & also acquaint him with Eddie.
Years later, Len sees his old teacher on TV,
& struck by a chance remark, decides to put
him right about why Eddie was last man
to hang in the Ville.

Jinnimengro means 'wise man' in Roma.

I actually knew 'Len' & his modest integrity made
a lasting impression. Edwin Bush's background,
trial & appeal are from Public Record. A McM.

Browning wrote The Ring & the Book, Thackeray The Rose & the Ring. Wagner pumped up his Ring Cycle & Tolkien dilated a Lord of the Rings. Now (at long last!) you have

     The Ring & the Sausage!

The Ring & the Sausage is a Detective Story with a difference, set in the eloquent era of George W Bush, raconteur & sports personality, who doesn't do nuance.

Young Tam loves his father & the huge mare Cleopatra. But a Great Hunger threatens not only his childhood, but all the land of his birth. When his parents argue far into the night, Tam fails at first to understand their dilemma. But rumour soon becomes reality, stalking up the hill of Barnamaghera, till there is little enough choice to argue over. Starve? Sicken? Or flee. But at what cost?

Told thru the eyes of young Tam, Cleopatra is based on a record of true events handed down in the author's family. A story of Ireland. A story of courage, compassion & sacrifice. A story of a boy & a horse.                                   

CHANGING TRAINS - an audio comedy:

13th December 1964. Roger's father has just died, leaving a letter of confession. Thus Roger soon learns his mild-mannered little Daddy was not quite what he seemed. And tho his father's thorny legacy demands a helter-skelter of well-meaning pretence & necessary lies, Roger finds  the whirligig almost fun. And is it really fair to say he confuses duty & desire? For Muriel, husband Roger's secret shenanigans are troubling, then suspicious & finally too much. Roger is left with the cats & the plants, to puzzle feelings he scarcely comprehends.

In a naive attempt to be open & honest & win back his wandering wife, Roger explains his absurd journey of personal discovery.                                             

Dilys only went out to buy comfortable shoes, but as Luck or Fate would have it, bumps into Diana Chandler, her Evening Degree student from way back. Diana won't stay to chat, which is odd, very odd. As Dilys recalls that dreadful injustice, her own sorry inability to help, & above all Diana's awesome response, she decides this time to do something about it.

Francesca Ryan’s long career includes the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Old Vic & extensive Rep. Highlights include Gertrude for Jonathan Miller’s most recent production of Hamlet. Frequent TV includes Coronation Street, Brookside, Hollyoaks & Waking the Dead.

1941, Xavier Perrot escapes from Occupied France on a mission. An air-raid finds him in a cellar near Piccadilly, where sheltering cooks & waiters spin a wine bottle to see who shall entertain. The bottle picks out Xavier, who declines to dance or sing. Instead he tells the story of his father's search for the Lost City of the Incas, an obsession which cost the old man fortune, health & marriage. He passed within 400 metres of Machu Picchu & missed it. How will he take the news of its discovery?

“It kept me on the edge of my seat till the end.” Philip Cooper, 2019.

“An astonishing story". Penelope Goodare, 2019.

Some time ago, I was selling a farmhouse in Germany. A country property is slow to shift & this was no exception. From the many that traipsed thru our door, one couple stood out. She (Helen of my story) was such a lovely person but why with Keith? How did they possibly come together? And then the back-story emerged.

Helen had been engaged to Keith's best friend & when the fiancé died in a car crash, it was Keith who comforted. I saw the dead fiancé's mother 'Beryl' had doubts similar to mine.

I have translated the story to Kent & it's told by Ned, Beryl's husband, who in the German 'original' came to survey the house. The twist in the story is very close to what actually happened.

FOUR OLD FOGIES or How to Scotch the Merchant Banker – a political farce.

On the crest of the Heath, a merchant banker is building a posh mansion from his ‘legally' gotten gains for almost wrecking the banking system. His picture windows look down (in every sense) upon  allotments the Council now want to sell in order to pay for a politically motivated 'austerity'.

The spanking new house encapsulates all the inequalities of a post-Thatcher society.

Four old fogies, old in years but not in spirit, decide to plan a 'perfect' crime. They will remind the money-manipulators of this world that there is such a thing as community.

“An escaped tiger pushed into the ruins of Café Josty,devoured a scattered pastry & died of that pleasure...”

 Hans-Georg von Studnitz: Als Berlin Brannte, 1963.

Berlin, November 1943. A huge air-raid on Nazi HQ over-looking the Zoo. Fascism has seen no need to evacuate mere animals. The admin blocks are hit but also pens & cages. An escaped tiger can wander the rubbled streets, enter a wrecked pastry-shop, gobble a cake & die.

Berlin already devastated. Scant drinking water. Little sanitation. A starving army corps is even now surrendering in the ice & debris of Stalingrad. Yet the patissier won't forgive a tittle-tattle joke about his wartime cakes & summons the joker to justice for slander.

Evoking later echoes of Beirut, Sarajevo & Aleppo, Tiger in the Cake Shop explores the wisdom or folly of expecting peacetime values while the fabric of society crumbles into squalor, flames & dust.

“Witty, elegant, intriguing, provoking”  Kathryn Vale, 2018.

“Sly humour, profound wisdom.” Nomi Rowe, 2018.

Professor Wedderburn, once upon a time short-listed for a Nobel prize, now giving meaning to his life by crusading against religion, is confronted by Mrs Pal, a sari-clad lady with scant education, natural intelligence, much charm & a hidden agenda.

Tanpura: Indian stringed instrument, strummed to make a drone or basso continuo.

McGonagall in Limbo

Posthumous fantasy? or post-life crisis?

An Audio Romp

William McGonagall, poet & tragedian, floats in Limbo awaiting marching orders from a ghostly, lackadaisical Tribunal. His reputation as the worst poet ever to disgrace the English language surely depends on his having been a sincere daftie.

But was he in fact a sly spoofter? Was his lousy metre & worse rhyme a product of involuntary bad taste or mere cynical bread & butter? His place in the Pantheon of notable Scots may well pivot on this posthumous enquiry.

Are a posse of unworldly & squabbling saints fit to decide? William finds timelessness tedious & intones a suitably discordant protest.

William McGonagall,
put-upon dunce? Or tongue-in-cheek clown?