The British Insulated Calendar Cables (BICC) was, for many decades, the biggest employer in my town of Prescot in Lancashire, later Merseyside. Founded in 1891 they supplied cables for telephone an…

A couple of months ago I went into Scratch studio in Liverpool to have an old song of mine remastered. The song, called The Last Fool on Earth, was recorded in about 1983. See, when I said old, I m…

I remember in a record shop in Liverpool buying a Dolly Parton single called The Seeker, sometime in the mid 1980’s. Dolly released the song in 1975. I wasn’t aware of the song when it …

In my hometown of Prescot in Merseyside on the 21st and 22nd of August it was the Serious Nonsense Festival which featured lots of great street performers and artists, many dressed in costumes, and…

In my hometown of Prescot in Merseyside on the 21st and 22nd of August it was the Serious Nonsense Festival which featured lots of great street performers and artists, many dressed in costumes, and…

Deep in the heart of suburbia, in a small area of Warrington in north-west England, a secret garden of wonder lies out of sight. Down an avenue that looks like any other lives Betty Smith, who has …

YouTube video by Paul Ariss

At the moment I am in the process of promoting my new song that came out on July 8th. I hate promotion. It’s like admin. It sort of begins when I send a press pack to influential music bloggers in …

At the moment I am in the process of promoting my new song that came out on July 8th. I hate promotion. It’s like admin. It sort of begins when I send a press pack to influential music bloggers in …

20 years ago, England were playing in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. It ended in another inglorious failure, an apparent Golden Generation of English players that included Stephen Gerrard, Joe Cole…

For this week's Song Lyric Sunday Jim is inviting us to play a song written or performed by someone who was born in the month of July, as he tells us in his post Mid-Summer State Of Mind. I have found a good website for these monthly posts and having consulted it I realised that I was really spoilt for choice: July is the birth month for Nanci Griffith, Cat Stevens and Linda Ronstadt, among several others that I also like a lot.

Wordpress, the hosting site host of my blog and pretty much each one I follow, have recently been giving out badges in recognition of a blogging milestone that your blog may have reached. It’s a li…

Are WordPress ‘Like’ buttons genuine support or empty clicks? An honest look at how bloggers use (and misuse) likes—and what really matters.

Forgive me Wordpress, readers and bloggers, it is two months since I last posted. I have no excuses, but I do have reasons. First off, I didn’t have anything to post about, but I knew you’d muddle …

YouTube video by Paul Ariss

In the last few months I have had the unenviable task of working through a huge pile of old family photographs and items that needed to be either kept or thrown away. Anyone who has ever been in th…

Yesterday at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street, Liverpool, between the city’s two iconic Anglican and Catholic cathedrals, I attended the Music Career Industry Festival. The festival, …

How long have you blogged for? A brief and honest look at the world of blogging over the last 12 years.

For about 15 years a painting by Alice Dalton Brown hung on the wall in front of me in the small bedroom where I did all my writing. The painting is called Tomorrow Morning. It is a large print, 24…

Photograph by Paul Ariss

I often wonder when gripped by one of my regular feelings of severe inadequacy whether there are two types of person in this world -those who can do DIY and those who can’t. I’ll take it further; i…

Dog and Gun Public House, Keswick, Cumbria. Photo by Paul Ariss

We're beginning to get into the Advent swing, and here are five more songs that I like. I've played four of these before but one is making its debut - the video is newly released so I'm showing that I'm down with the kids and keeping my fingers on the pulse of that pop music thing. Or maybe not... This first one was newly released last year, and I played it then.

As this weird period of my year continues in my sisters spare room, waiting as the legal palaver grinds on and on for my new property 130 miles away, I try and find new ways daily to fill the hours…

Jane Austen was born 250 years ago in Hampshire and is regarded by many as England’s greatest female author. Writing in an age when women were not considered to have credibility in the arts she had…