On the Tenth Day of Brexit, My True Love Gave to Me
- January 10, 2021
- by
- Matt
It’s less than two weeks since the Supreme Leader Comrade John-Son-Un signed the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement the day before the transition period for leaving the EU expired. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be a Brexiter was very heaven. John-Son-Un himself, never one to hide his light under a bushel, solemnly proclaimed that his ‘jumbo-Canada-style deal’ had finally ‘settled the European question.’
The demagogue-turned-peacemaker also claimed that his deal would ‘end some of the rancour and recrimination that we’ve had in recent years, allow us to come together...
Why I’m Not ‘Moving On’
- January 03, 2021
- by
- Matt
Many years ago back in 2003, the Dixie Chicks played in London on the eve of the Iraq War, and their vocalist Natalie Maines had the temerity to criticise the war, and George Bush, while introducing one of their finest songs Travellin’ Soldier. This statement dragged the group into a political storm. The Chicks, as...
2020: The Year that Wasn’t
- December 31, 2020
- by
- Matt
Of all the things I expected from 2020 last New Year’s Eve, I have to say I did not expect to be living under actual or semi quarantine for nine months in the middle of a pandemic. My wife was more prescient. As far back as last December she expressed concern that the virus in...
Have Yourselves a Kakistocratic Brexmas
- December 26, 2020
- by
- Matt
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when the long-awaited announcement was finally presented to the world, hastily wrapped in cheap PR wrapping paper and served up by the grifter-in-chief in his very own Santa’s grotto. Preceded by a hark-the-herald-angels fanfare from the government stenographers in the rightwing press, the Supreme Leader of Brexitania, Comrade John-Son-Un, announced...
The Country of the Blind
- December 12, 2020
- by
- Matt
I recently bought a copy of the official guide to the 1992 Seville Expo in connection with a novel that I’m currently working on. Most of it is written in the tourist-guide kitsch that you would expect to find from an exhibition that celebrated Columbus’s voyages as the beginning of an ‘age of discovery’ leading...
Project Fear: The Novel that Never Was
- July 13, 2020
- by
- Matt
All writers know that not all their ideas get off the ground. Sometimes you come up with an idea that you think has potential, but then your agent or publisher says no for all kinds of reasons that you don’t anticipate. So here’s what happened with a pitch that I failed to launch a while...
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