Sam Redlark

  Mark Lanegan's autobiography - Sing Backwards and Weep , charts the course of the tombstone-voiced singer's life, from his dismal, alcoholic upbringing in Ellensburg, Washington, up until the speedball-induced death of his close friend - the Alice in Chains frontman, Layne Staley, in 2002. Lanegan portrays himself as a piece of shit, with very few redeeming qualities: A bona fide drug dealer, whose band (Screaming Trees) happen to be signed to a major record label. For much of the book he is in the grip of twin addictions to crack cocaine and heroin; the latter requiring constant maintenance. From there on, it's a relentless downhill grind, to the point where he is sleeping rough while working as a dealer's lackey, stealing small quantities of smack from his employer, while pawning his last remaining possession of any value - a pair of filthy leather trousers that he purchased in Paris with the aforementioned Staley. This bleak downturn of events is sparsely seasoned ...

image generated by Craiyon My response to this week's Guardian Notes & Queries column was found to be in breach of community guidelines. The most logical reason for this would be an aside in which the narrator asks a friend whether his wife is still beating him.  I regard this, not as a slight, but as an overall improvement in attitude from The Guardian. I recall, several years ago, reading an opinion piece in the paper's Sunday incarnation, The Observer, where the writer played down the impact of casual violence by women against men and confessed to having been " slap happy " herself on occasions. [archive:  https://archive.is/UBRi3 ] Which sport gives you the best all-round skill set? Peter Bedward delivered the toast at his firstborn daughter's wedding with a blackened right eye and with his bottom lip swollen like a rotten orange. I had seen him sporting similar injuries before. They are common among inexperienced librarians who, having failed to properly...

Over the weekend I had cause to venture into the unnerving, multi-level attic of our home, in a search for the origin of a disconcerting line of mottled damp that had appeared along a sloping section of the ceiling, just outside the bathroom. My cursory inspection of the point where the roof of the extension joins with the old roof provided me with no insight into the root of the problem, beyond my observation that there are no visible pipes that might be causing the leak. While I was shuffling backwards towards the loft hatch, over a collage of loose wooden boards, I accidentally knelt down on a shoebox, squashing it at one end. I took it with me into the spare room to inspect the contents and to see whether it could be repaired. Inside I found several bundles of very old, miscellaneous photographs, in an assortment of proportions and small sizes, none larger in length or width than three inches. They had been wrapped-up in loosely folded sheets of brown paper that turned out to be di...

Dear British Library, Attached to this email is a file containing my eBook, 'The Missionary Dune' which was published for the Amazon Kindle on the 30th June, 2021. I hope that this will satisfy my legal obligation to deposit a copy of the book with your organisation. It is only right and proper that future generations be given the same opportunity to ignore its existence as those who are currently living. Prior to writing this email, I had been advised by a member of your Digital Processing Team that a zipped copy of my book could be downloaded from my KDP dashboard. This proved not to be the case. I have since discovered that, because the book was produced using Kindle Create, it cannot be downloaded and previewed offline. I duly contacted Amazon requesting guidance. They sent me the link to the file that you now have in your possession. You will find the relevant part of the email that Amazon sent me trowelled onto the bottom of this communication. It is my un...

We (that is Neale Venise and myself) had been trying to work out what had changed in the Ténéré – an area of sandy plains located in northern-central Sahara desert. It is within the shifting topography of this desolate region that immense storms, manifesting as curtain walls of roiling dust hundreds of feet high, lay down their foundations. Once they grow beyond a certain critical mass they untether themselves and advance approximately westwards at a walking pace, until they hit the coast, at which point they deviate north or south, entering the subtropical zones as windless monsoons that leave incongruous dunes in their wake. These storms are slow to germinate, usually building to a peak over several months. Their roots lie in the electrical charge that is generated by sand particles moving against each other. These currents form meandering v-shaped channels in the sand that can stretch for thousands of miles. Typically when a gathering storm decamps it will remain close to the ground...

image generated by Craiyon The Guardian closed the comments on this week's Notes & Queries , before I could add my well-researched, rigorously fact-checked voice to a debate, regarding what one should say to a friend who is planning on sending their child to a private school. Hence the appearance of my response here on this blog. For the record I failed my 11+ and attended an hilariously violent comprehensive school, from which I emerged with three A Levels and a lasting contempt for the education system. I sat two additional A levels at a fee paying school in London. Some of my friends attended fee paying schools almost from the get go. We all turned out alright. What’s the right response to a friend who says they are sending their child to private school? What’s the appropriate response to a friend who tells you they are sending their child to private school?  Anthony Huxley, Dunfermline It would depend very much on the private school. By way of example, if my friend wa...

  If everything goes according to plan and there are no hiccups, then my novella, The Missionary Dune, will be available as an eBook on the Amazon Kindle store, on Wednesday, 30 th June.  I regard it as a success in the sense that it is representative of the kind of story that I want to write. It has been constructed from ideas and concepts that are designed to appear as though they may have some grounding in reality, even though they don't and it's all made up. It is a work of almost pure fiction and imagination, containing only trace elements of research. It goes its own way and doesn't pander to any current literary trends. A few weeks ago, I designed a cover for the book. I am not even remotely competent as an artist, nor could I afford to engage one; in any case the point of this project is that I do everything myself. To accommodate my low level of artistic talent, the image had to be a photograph; one taken on my ancient digital camera, which was built by the Maya...