Showing posts with label pembrokeshire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pembrokeshire. Show all posts

Wednesday, 11 November 2020

My Gap Years

There seems to be a three-year gap to fill in... 

Since 2017, when the blogging stopped, there have been two more Kettstocks – both Kettstock2 and Kettstock3 ran over two nights rather than just one, and were both huge successes. Sadly, we lost a great singer and a great man in Bill Deacon. And sadly, the Russ Payne Band came to an end due to a perfect storm of personal difficulties – but not the traditional "musical differences".

Bassist Bill Keller and I diversified into jazz, in Brighton and London respectively, and were both playing and gigging up until the pandemic hit.

I joined the staff of the excellent magazine The Oldie for a year and a bit, before eventually retiring from the fray. I have continued as a freelance writer and as an editor and contributor to www.Pembrokeshire.Online, the community website for my favourite county.

And I have continued to travel... My latest piece, on following in the wake of Odysseus, will be in the December 2020 issue of The Oldie.

That piece is 1,200 words... but behind that are something like 70,000 words that made up my journal from March to October 2020, An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague.

I'm now editing that journal and will start posting it here very soon...

Sunday, 21 May 2017

Life Is... Pembrokeshire

Apparently my grandmother was a gipsy... which could explain why I never seem to have settled anywhere or in any situation for any length of time.

Many places have felt like home to me, however... Bristol, Easter Island, Brighton, Arizona, Varanasi, San Francisco, Texas, the Florida Keys, the Greek islands, London... but the place that draws me back most right now is Pembrokeshire in South Wales.

I think I love it because it is so open and wild and far from England's overcrowded, polluted, stress-filled cities. And because I could walk and walk forever along its amazing coastline...

It is also blessed with an excellent website, Pembrokeshire Life Online, that covers every aspect of the area – and which also has been kind enough to run an article by me on walking the Pembrokeshire Coast Path.