• Books
    • A Receiver of Stolen Words
  • Home
    • Education and Libraries Question Time
    • OU A215 Creative Writing: What did I learn?
    • OU A363 Creative Writing: what did I learn?
    • About Chateaux En Espagne
    • BlogLinks
      • Contact
      • Shortlink
  • Stories 2012
    • A weekend in the garden
    • Clone brothers
    • Heaven Palace Beach Resort Hotel
    • Lucky sixpence
    • Mulcahy and Rivers
    • My boyfriend ran off with the Nifty-Ware salesman
    • Nothing ventured – nothing gained
    • Optical Illusions
    • Parallax
    • Peace walls
    • Power of a woman
    • SANS, SOUCI.
    • The Manoir
    • The Morgawr
  • Stories 2013
    • A matter of time
    • Dead wires
    • Hikikomori
    • Moonlight flit
    • Murder on the Dejanira
    • The Analytical Assurance Company
    • The Bones of a Plot
    • The Eye of the Storm
    • The London Spy
    • The man who killed the thing he loved
    • The scarlet thread
    • The Tree of Knowledge
  • Stories 2014
    • Death at the Red Rose
    • Orange trees
    • Out of Africa
    • Snow
    • Something old…
    • The Best of All Possible Worlds
      • For Anton!
    • The Duddingham Line
    • The memories of sand
    • The shopping list
    • The Transaction
  • Stories 2015
    • ‘Silver Ghost’
    • A Month at Bath
    • Adam
    • Arrivals
    • Gold, and blue…
    • Hinky-Dinky, Parlay-Voo
    • Love at first sight
    • Meat
    • Out of the blue
    • Smoking is bad for you
    • The Immortal Lavoisier
  • STORIES 2016
    • 969 miles
    • Doggerland
    • Love and Death at St Cluedo’s
    • The Imp
  • Stories 2017
    • Pond Dippers
    • Salou
    • The cyclist
    • The Invincible Armada
    • The kitchen window
  • Stories 2018
    • 60 minutes
    • A Christmas birthday
    • Hate mail
    • Snow Devils
    • The ‘Daisy Dancer’
    • The picnic
  • Stories 2019
    • The Speyside Regiment

Chateaux en Espagne

~ Stories and reflections

Chateaux en Espagne

Monthly Archives: October 2015

Entry III: The Sinking of the Nameless: Recollections of a Volunteer/Journalist

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by chateauxenespagne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

We need decent political leadership NOW. Volunteers can’t do it alone. #refugees

MARIENNA POPE-WEIDEMANN

Great tragedies are supposed to have name. The Titanic, the Lusitania… Their dead live forever in the stories we tell about them and the living fight for change in their memory that they might not die in vain. This is just a boat of ‘migrants’ that sunk in the Aegean, another number, another regrettable spat of collateral damage in the border war. But not to us, the ones who were there when the rescued came into harbour. Not to me. Last night was the most traumatic of my life. Back home, I spoke with confidence about how ‘borders kill’ – but now I’ve seen it with my own eyes and I will never forget the sinking of that nameless ship.

Official Count So Far: 11 confirmed dead (5+ children) & at least 40 still lost at sea

My friend Ashley and I were supposed to drive back across the island…

View original post 2,623 more words

Tectonic Plates Or Losers’ Blues?

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by chateauxenespagne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

‘Tectonic plates…the slow subterranean shifting’: eventually the lava bubbles up from underneath and structures that seemed immutable come crashing down.

All Human Life Is Hereabouts

The last few weeks have been unlike anything I can remember in my life, politically.  There is a disconnect between people, and between the premises upon which they build their beliefs that is strange and unsettling.  Listening to the Today programme this morning, in which Labour’s calm Seema Malhotra was interviewed by an aggressive Sarah Montague, the thought suddenly hit me: it was like a discussion about the route to take on a long sea voyage between a flat earther and someone who believed the earth was round.  Montague was annoyed because Malhotra wouldn’t say where Labour would find the £15 billion needed to pay for tax credits, which Montague framed as an accounting question.  Malhotra was saying, economic policy is not accounting, and that growing the economy grows revenues.  They were talking about different things, with no point of contact whatsoever.  Montague was yelling that if they did what…

View original post 538 more words

180th Anniversary of Town Council Elections

20 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by chateauxenespagne in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Local government made our cities the great places they are today: water and sanitation, street works, street lighting, police and criminal justice, social services, parks, libraries, schools, birth marriage and death registration, coroners, theatres, concert halls and leisure facilities. Local government is what makes your city a civilised, enlightened place to live. We have started to take it for granted, and now these much maligned organisations are being cut to the bone for austerity, its structures sold off for profit. Civilisation is slowly being taken away. Never forget the lessons of history!

The Victorian Commons

This month marks the anniversary of a completely new system of local elections being implemented throughout England and Wales. One hundred and eighty years ago, almost 180 boroughs in England and Wales began to publish the lists of all those eligible to vote in the new town council elections created by the 1835 Municipal Reform Act. Barely three weeks after the Act’s passage, specially appointed revising barristers started setting up registration courts to decide who would be able to vote in what initally looked like being a remarkably democratic franchise. Unlike the parliamentary household vote – only given to those occupying property worth at least £10 a year in rental value – the new municipal franchise had no minimum property requirement. In theory every male householder, no matter how humble his dwelling, would be able to take part.

Hand written council voting paper, 1835 Hand written council voting paper, 1835

As the revising barristers set about…

View original post 645 more words

Giselle

Giselle

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Recent Posts

  • July/August 2018 TCWG short story competition
  • Always Remember I Love You
  • April 2018 TCWG short story competition
  • Want Writing Advice from a #flashfiction expert? #IWSG
  • Learn literary theory for free!

Archives

  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • April 2018
  • February 2018
  • July 2017
  • March 2017
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • July 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012

Categories

  • Abstract art
  • Birmingham
  • Creative Writing
  • Historical fiction
  • History
  • Library of Birmingham
  • TCWG
  • Uncategorized
  • Victorians

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.