24 Walks in the Calder Valley

Revised and reprinted, September 2009

First having appeared in the Hebden Bridge Times and Todmorden News, the twenty-four walks in Gone Walkabout will have almost all of us savouring to the full the stunning and historic fells, crags, woodlands and moorlands of Far-West Yorkshire.

GOODCHILD

Five years in the Victorian-style Royal Infant Orphanage Asylum was followed by life in the Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll and Revolution scene of Essex University in the late sixties.

Dropping out after visiting Paris for the May 68 events and a series of unjust dope busts, he was a briefly a youth worker in Peckham and Islington on radical youth projects. He then spent the next 25 years living honestly on the margins in the no tax, no pension zone.

An irreverent, satirical and humorous look at a small Pennine milltown something like Hebden Bridge.

Writer John Morrison has enraged locals in his home town of Hebden Bridge by penning...a tale of its 'alternative culture'.
(Manchester Evening News)

"Local publishers Pennine Pens
beat all records with a runaway local hit" - The Book Case

Anne Lister is best known to us as a lesbian diarist. Nature's Domain tracks her intense courtship of Ann Walker, vividly and candidly recorded in Anne's daily journals - and partly written in her own secret code.

This dramatic story, hitherto unknown and never before unpublished, unfolds to New Year's Eve 1832. It records how Anne Lister's indomitable will enabled her to mould nature to her own powerful desires.

Simon Fletcher is from the Wyre Forest and lives in Shropshire. A literature development worker, freelance writer, poet, novelist and storyteller, his work has been widely published and he's performed all over Britain in the last few years.

He works with Debjani Chatterjee and Basir Sultan Kazmi promoting better inter-cultural understanding through Mini Mushaira and with Jeff and Dan Phelps on Severn Spirit, an entertainment about the River Severn, its culture and history.

A Strange Tale
of the Satisfactions
and Frustrations
of Revenge featuring
Money, Sex and Cunning

Lisa Ruskin was born prematurely with serious heart defects. Still barely conscious from the general anaesthetic following an emergency Caesarian section, Debbie was badgered into giving her consent for her baby's life support system to be turned off. Later she learned that her child's organs had been retained by the hospital's pathology department.

Meet Jess and her friends, Bridget Jones' elder sisters, the struggling but still optimistic middle-aged women of Berringden Brow.

Good degrees, poor employment prospects, having to cope with bizarre job interviews, stroppy teenage kids, ageism, sexism, lookism, sizeism... scanning the personal columns in search of a rare eligible man without hypochondria, a live-in mother, multiple allergies, objections to snoring, a preference for playing with toy soldiers, the inability to keep a date, or a penchant for sex in public places.

A fascinating, autobiographical account of the life, times and pioneering work of one of the founders of the children’s library movement. Eileen charts her life from birth into a large minister’s family, her struggle to receive higher education and her role in the transformation of libraries from arid, adult enclaves to child-friendly havens where a lifelong love of reading was cultivated.

Read more about:

Wounded Man: not gay, exactly but happy to pitch in if they were ever short-handed

Town Drunk: intoxicated stalward of the Grievous Bodily Arms

Dope Dealer: attempting to go upmarket by styling himself as a Substance Abuse Negotiator.

And of course, Willow Woman

Charming children’s poems based on Indian/Hindu myths and legends by a leading Bengali/English poet. An ideal addition to the multicultural library or bookshelf

Recommended and supported by the Poetry Society.

Energetic and beguiling.
Andrew Motion (Poet Laureate).

These "emails" speak in a variety of voices and forms about the marginalised in society. Simon goes some way to justifying poetry’s claim to speak, "truth to power". There are also poems of friendship, love and delightful jeux d’espirit.

I enjoyed the deft fluency, the economy, the pure tone. Ted Hughes (Late Poet Laureate) wrote of The Occasions of Love, also published by Pennine Pens

Here, between soft covers, is everything you need to know about life, love and laughter in a small Pennine town . . . and quite a lot you don't, frankly.

Willow Woman: a warm and beautiful adornment to the social milieu.
Wounded Man: just one more loser in the lottery of love.
Grievous Bodily Arms - where the men think foreplay consists of taking their hats off.

Elaine Connell is one of the UK's leading authorities on the work of Sylvia Plath and maintains the popular Sylvia Plath Forum.

Elaine Connell explores some of the controversies which have surrounded Plath's work. Are feminists right in claiming her as one of their own? Or should her poetry been seen as a product of fifties femininity? Plath was keenly interested in Robert Graves' White Goddess and his conception of the Great Goddess. Ms Connell explores how these ideas might have affected her work.

A collection of poems bridging the cultures of Britain and the Indian sub-continent.

"From a ghazal about a firefly to a bizarre ode to Sigmund Freud via a poem connecting the Pennines and the Himalayas, this book travels far and wide and deep into places and people."
Chris Meade,
Director of the Poetry Society

The Chess Board, a play in four acts, was originally published in Pakistan (1987) and was widely appreciated.

Set in olden times, the princess will only marry someone who can beat her at chess.

Son of a famous Urdu poet, the late Nasir Kazmi, Basir Kazmi has now translated The Chess Board into English.

There is something mysterious about Molly's new next-door neighbour. Why does she have a big pink van which advertises pizzas? Where does she drive off to late at night? And what has this to do with a strange organisation called Fight the Light, with its instructions to keep watching M31?

Molly and her friend Mick decide to find out. Their efforts lead to a series of night-time adventures and to their discovery of an unusual environmental campaign.

An exciting and enjoyable story - especially for anyone who likes pizzas...

A collection of love poems

the occasions of love are few,
and should not be strained or studied;
rather they should be taken gently
and treasured, not mourned for.

"I enjoyed the deft fluency, the economy, the pure tone, the pang - (as Frost, said no pang, no poem)" - Ted Hughes

Hear a sample:

Elaine Connell and Chris Ratcliffe spent months cycling in the mountains and valleys of South-west France, gathering material and experiences for Cycling in Search of the Cathars.

The Cathars were medieval heretics, vegetarian, thought women should be treated the same as men, were against war and violence and believed in reincarnation. Crusaders were sent by the Roman Catholic Church to wipe out all Cathars.

A collection of poems which forms a lyric, yet authentic elegy for the working class districts of Sheffield of his own, his parents’ and grandparents’ youth. Here are the steel works, knockers up, chapels and the characters of the industrial North at its zenith. Bedford writes like D. H. Lawrence but with a critical love, rather than disdain for his subject matter.

More info