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# Ian Marchant: Writer and Broadcaster

One Fine day

## Posts

- [Catch the Wave: Order The Breaking Wave by Ian Marchant](https://ianmarchant.com/2025/08/catch-the-wave-pre-order-the-breaking-wave-by-ian-marchant/) - Pre-order The Breaking Wave by Ian Marchant before its release on 18 September. Get your copy first from the only authorised retailer.
- [J.L. Carr and Stocken Farm](https://ianmarchant.com/2015/03/j-l-carr-and-stocken-farm/) - I am a long time fan of the great English novelist J.L. Carr. The title of my novel 'The Battle for Dole Acre' is an homage to his 'Battle of Pollock's Crossing', and I took 'How Steeple Sinderby Wanderers Won the FA Cup' when I was invited on the Radio Four programme 'A Good Read'
- [Goodbye Pie Fans, but then very soon, Hello New Book Enthusiasts](https://ianmarchant.com/2023/03/goodbye-pie-fans-but-then-very-soon-hello-new-book-enthusiasts/) - First of all, a note on football. I did not finish Ian's Big Fat FA Cup Challenge. You might imagine that it wasn't that demanding a fundraiser, but in the end, it was. En route to the Second Round game, Hartlepool United vs Harrogate Town, I became unwell, and had no choice but to return
- [The Turtledove. An Extract from One Fine Day, with Singing.](https://ianmarchant.com/2023/04/the-turtledove-an-extract-from-one-fine-day-with-singing/) - This is a slightly different draft of the edited version that appears in the book, One Fine Day, published by September Books Buy Here! https://septemberpublishing.org/product/one-fine-day/ Music was only my third love, after girls and books, but it's a close run thing. I suspect it won't be my last, either; grandchildren trump even music, I find.
- [Mixtape. A Love Story, with five songs.](https://ianmarchant.com/2019/06/mixtape-a-story-with-five-songs/) - Martin is driving south out of Birmingham on the M40, in a white S-reg Hyundai Accent which he bought on e-bay with pretty much his last three hundred pounds. He hopes it will survive the trip. There's a clonk from the nearside front that is starting to concern him. Earlier, Martin had thrown a few
- [Ian's Big Fat FA Cup Fundraising Challenge](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/08/ians-big-fat-fa-cup-challenge/) - I expect when you first heard I had incurable prostate cancer, incurable due to its involvement with my bones, you thought, 'Oh no!, I bet he's going to try to raise money for Macmillan'. And so it has come to pass. I am doing it thusly. I'm going to attempt to go to every roundI expect when you first heard I had incurable prostate cancer, incurable due to its involvement with my bones, you thought, 'Oh no!, I bet he's going to try to raise money for Macmillan'. And so it has come to pass. I am doing it thusly. I'm going to attempt to go to every round
- [Post Extra-Preliminary and Preliminary Round Reports.](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/08/post-extra-preliminary-and-preliminary-round-reports/) - I should say right at the start that following a bit I did about Ian's Big Fat FA Cup Fundraising Challenge on BBC Hereford and Worcester, the directors of Stourport Swifts paid the biggest donation so far into my Just Giving account. That's a measure of how welcoming a club the Swifts are. In which
- [First Qualifying Round Report](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/09/first-qualifying-round-report/) - September 3rd, 2022, Emirates FACup First Qualifying Round, Trade Tyres Community Stadium, Brownfields Road, Lichfield. Lichfield City 2, Stourport Swifts 2. Att. 162 September 6th, 2022, Emirates FACup First Qualifying Round Replay, Walshes Meadow, Stourport. Stourport Swifts 0, Lichfield City 1. Att 202 Pies 7.5/10 Funny old game, life. One minute, you're bobbing along, happy
- [Second Qualifying Round report](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/09/second-qualifying-round-report/) - September 17th, 2022, Emirates FACup Second Qualifying Round, Trade Tyres Community Stadium, Brownfields Road, Lichfield. Lichfield City 0 - Boston United 4. Att 704 Pies: 7.59 A few years ago I read somewhere (can't remember where), that being a writer is the most sought-after job there is. I gave my hollow laugh, and when I've
- [Fourth Qualifying Round Report](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/11/fourth-qualifying-round-report/) - Emirates FACup 4th Qualifying Round, 15/10/2022, ARMCO Stadium, Solihull Solihull Moors 1 - Basford United 0 Att. 1058 Pie, 3/10 When we meet friends, or pals, or acquaintances – in fact, pretty much anybody, come to think of it - we tend to ask, (and are asked in turn), ‘How are you’? No one really
- [Ian's FACup Challenge, 3rd Qualifying Round Report](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/10/ians-facup-challenge-3rd-qualifying-round-report/) - Emirates FACup 3rd Qualifying Round, October 1st Basford United 1 -1 Boston United Replay, Tuesday 4th October, Basford win on penalties. I have been suffering from Bad Faith. I've been working on a book since autumn 2019. This work has run consecutively with my cancer diagnosis. I submitted in May, and ever since have been
- [Fun for Some; Episode One](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/08/fun-for-some-episode-one/) - Available Here! In 2007, having moved back to Radnorshire after 17 years away, ten of them in Lancaster, I got a call from an old schoolpal of my daughters, asking if I'd like to present a TV documentary about the great engineer Thomas Telford. Her name was Holly Blackwell, and I knew her because she
- [Quitting Anti-vaxxer enabling Spotify](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/01/quitting-anti-vaxxer-enabling-spotify/) - If Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are quitting Spotify because of the platform offered to anti-vax truther Joe Rogan, then so am I. But how can I replace it, and save my carefully manicured playlists? I put out a call on FaceBook, and well-informed friends talked me through a few options. I don’t want to
- [An Open Letter to Fay Jones, MP for Brecon and Radnor.](https://ianmarchant.com/2022/02/an-open-letter-to-fay-jones-mp-for-brecon-and-radnor/) - Dear Ms Jones, I'm sure you will be sorry to hear that I currently have Covid, which gives me extra time to follow the situation in Ukraine, and to feel the frustrations of impotence. Old, ill, overweight, unfit, unable to shoot straight, and a coward, I am unable to cross Europe to take up arms
- [My courageous, yet futile, battle against prostate cancer](https://ianmarchant.com/2021/05/my-courageous-yet-futile-battle-against-prostate-cancer/) - It is traditional, for writers of blogs which have lain dormant for a while and who have decided to start posting again, to apologise for their slackness when they finally get around to putting something up. I need make no such apology. I have not been slack. I have been courageously battling cancer. Well, not
- [One Fine Day](https://ianmarchant.com/2019/08/one-fine-day/) - This morning (24/08/02019) at the Presteigne Festival, I talked for the first time about my new project, which is called, as you might have guessed, One Fine Day. So It seemed an appropriate moment to do a first post here. It's a response to the diary of my seven times great great grandfather, old Thomas
- [St Asaph, Patron saint of illegal parking.](https://ianmarchant.com/2020/01/st-asaph-patron-saint-of-illegal-parking/) - Last Friday, 24/01/02020, I had an enjoyable trip over to see Paul Williams in Cardigan/Aberteifi, to talk about the forthcoming launch of the Radio Free Radnorshire podcast, and how to keep m'website moving through the water for the new book project, One Fine Day. This website is 21 years old in June. It's one of
- [The Song of Rhulen](https://ianmarchant.com/2021/05/the-song-of-rhulen/) - This is 'Rhulen', as displayed in Rhulen Church, in Radnorshire. This post is really just to share this lovely tune, in the hope that someone will enjoy playing it, and maybe try writing some words. Here is a link to the Colwyn Benifice, of which Rhulen is part If you do write some words, be
- [I've had my chips](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/06/ive-had-my-chips/) - The combination of our first wedding anniversary with some teaching in that London for the National Academy of Writing meant that my wife and I were looking for something fun to do in the Sarfeast last Wednesday evening. So we put up at an hotel in Maidenhead, and went for dinner at Heston Blumenthal's pub,
- [Glasson Dock Yacht Rock](https://ianmarchant.com/2019/08/glasson-dock-yacht-rock/) - I've never posted a link to this stuff before, mostly because although this website is almost 20 years old, I've always been slow on the uptake, even as I've been ahead of the curve. (Eh? - Ed) What I've done here is listen to various old Mood Index recordings, made over the 20 years since
- [Communitarianism](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/communitarianism/) - Just a few links tonight.... Things run by volunteers... http://www.talyllyn.co.uk/ http://www2.btcv.org.uk/display/home By local communities... http://www.gigha.org.uk/ http://www.rutlandtelecom.co.uk/ By Trusts... http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/index.shtml By various kinds of co-operative... http://www.co-operative.coop/ http://www.johnlewis.com/
- [Drive carefully](https://ianmarchant.com/2015/02/drive-carefully/) - You might think you know who your family are, and where you’re from, but a few days diddling about on the internet can turn what you knew, what you thought you knew, inside out.I was born in Guildford, son of Alan Marchant, in 1958. Alan wasn’t a great bloke, as it goes, and I wrote
- [A Walk to Bongville](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/11/a-walk-to-bongville/) - I have been waiting to read Olivia Laing's 'To the River' for a year; I couldn’t afford the hardback when I saw it in the summer in the Penrallt Gallery Bookshop in Machynlleth, but when on a recent visit to a daughter in Norwich I spotted the paperback in the excellent Book Hive Bookshop, I
- [New Specs](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/09/new-specs/) - Coming away from Secret Garden Party on the morning of Monday 29th July this year, more than a little fucked, I caught a train from Peterborough to Leeds. I'd bought a paper, so I took off my distance specs, put on my reading specs, opened the paper and fell straightway into blessed sleep. I
- [Ras Tafari in Botolph St.Otto](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/10/ras-tafari-in-botolph-st-otto/) - false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Brewer St. 3/04/2007 'Life has been one dizzying round of social obligation since I returned from Thailand. Here in Botolph St Otto, for example, we have had the Grand Final of the Haille Sellassie Memorial Dominoes Cup. It is, I think, a little known fact that The Emperor Haille Sellassie spent
- [Never did me any harm...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/never-did-me-any-harm/) - Today the Tories, aided by Michael Caine, unveiled their plans for a version of National Service, what you might call National Service Lite. It won't be compulsory, but will combine a few weeks of outdoor fun with a bit of community service. You can always rely on the Real Tories to come up with gimcrack
- [Blood and Soil](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/06/blood-and-soil/) - Hello to those that are left of my readers. I'm sorry I haven't posted for a long time, but I've been in the midst of some important events in my life; events about which it seemed inappropriate to blog, but which have so filled my consciousness that I simply didn't feel I had anything else
- [Puppy shit](https://ianmarchant.com/2014/01/puppy-shit/) - We have a puppy. Her name is Peggy.She is about 14 weeks old. She shits on the floor. Here is a picture of her on Wentes Meadow, Presteigne, where dogs are free to shit, a liberty which she all too infrequently takes advantage of. My name is Ian. I am 55. I am a human,
- [Mood Index album on You Tube](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/09/mood-index-album-on-you-tube/) - My lovely step-daughter, Miss Victoria Mason, has undertaken to upload the Mood Index album from 1997, 'Lino Women and Song' onto You Tube. This is the first track she did....
- [Music really was my first love.](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/12/music-really-was-my-first-love/) - And sometimes it's the only thing that pulls you through. 25 years ago, I lived in a freezing cold artists studio up in the South Downs behind Newhaven. It was winter, and I had no heating, no hot water,and no way to cook anything. The studio was in the garden of a beautiful and isolated
- [I remember Lancaster](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/12/i-remember-lancaster/) - Earlier this evening I was bimbling about looking for something I'd written a few years back. Clicking on long unopened files, I found this. It was written as a commision for a bloke who was doing a mag of some kind; can't remember what. He asked me to write something called 'I Remember Lancaster' in
- [Decades of fun at Radio Free Radnorshire](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/01/decades-of-fun-at-radio-free-radnorshire/) - So, to celebrate the new Decade, we here at Radio Free Radnorshire have been speculating thusly; which was the best year for popular music in each of the decades of poppy rockin'? We have chosen six years, one from each of the Fifties, the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties, the Nineties and the Noughties. We
- [The night before lambing](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/the-night-before-lambing/) - Standing in the bank queue today, I overheard Gwenda the clerk say to one of the customers that her lambing starts tomorrow, i.e., the 15th of January. Like many Radnorshire women, Gwenda works to support a family farm. Farmer's wives are still as involved with their farms as ever, but now that involvement usually means
- [It's only just beginning](https://ianmarchant.com/2019/06/its-only-just-beginning/) - This morning, just after 12, the news reached Elda’s Colombian Coffee House, High Street, Presteigne, that our local MP, loathsome Tory fraudster Chris Davies, had lost his seat in a recall petition. He’s upset about it; after all, all he did was fiddle his expenses. There is to be a by-election here. No one is
- [Why I've (re) joined the Greens.](https://ianmarchant.com/2014/06/why-ive-re-joined-the-greens/) - UKIP are the face of exclusion. Because most people feel excluded from mainstream politics, fewer people participate in such limited democratic processes as remain. UKIP, appealing as they do to people who are frightened by change, the future, death, have done well. If people don’t start doing actual politics again, then UKIP will continue to
- [It’s only natural to feel awkward, Mr Farage.](https://ianmarchant.com/2014/03/its-only-natural-to-feel-awkward-mr-farage/) - For a few years now, I've been working away at a book about my friend Bob Rowberry, and how his life maps on to the history of the British counter-culture. For example, in his excellent book ‘Electric Eden’, Rob Young tells the story of Vashti Bunyan’s two year trek by horse-drawn caravan from Kent
- [How indeed...](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/05/how-indeed/) - This is a first pass in some haste to say hello to you, subscribers, regular visitors, victims of search engines (North/South divide? Tit-rub?) etc to the new look website. This is the fifth full make-over that Perry Venus has done since we started doing this web site thirteen years ago. It's to go before the
- [It's 5 O clock! Let's make history!](https://ianmarchant.com/2019/06/its-5-o-clock-lets-make-history/) - It’s five o clock, and the petition to remove the Brecon and Radnorshire MP Chris Davies is now closed, The count starts at 10am tomorrow (Friday 21st) and the result will be known by the afternoon. It’s not often the tides of history rise so high that they come anywhere close to the Great Green
- [Why All the Stations was/is special](https://ianmarchant.com/2017/07/why-i-love-all-the-stations/) - Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe, sickened by 2016, resolved to do something, anything. The thing they resolved to do was visit all of the UK's stations over the spring and summer of 2017, and to make ‘a documentary’ about the trip. Here are the Rules, and what counts as a station ; http://allthestations.co.uk/about/ There are
- [Old Chas Ambler](https://ianmarchant.com/2015/09/old-chas-ambler/) - Yesterday, Saturday 5th of September, we buried my dear old friend and partner in crime, Christopher Charles Ambler, known to the world as Chas. We buried him in a remarkable ceremony at a remarkable site up in the Tatham Fells above the vilage of Lowgill. It's a place Chas knew and loved well, a place
- [All Souls Day](https://ianmarchant.com/2015/11/all-souls-day/) - Just been to church. I live opposite St. Andrews Church in Presteigne, one of 4 Church of England churches in Wales. (It's a long story, with which I won't bore those readers uninterested in church history). I went because today is All Souls Day, a day of remembrance for those who have recently died. And
- [The Good Guys](https://ianmarchant.com/2016/05/the-good-guys/) - OK, I'm not sure this is going to go down well, but I'm going to give it a try. Today I saw a couple of videos online featuring supporters of Brexit. One was this report from RT about Britain First's reception in Leicester as they tried to drum up support for an EU exit. The
- [Carr's Herefordshire, with extras....](https://ianmarchant.com/2016/01/carrs-herefordshire-with-extras/) - This is JL Carr's map of Herefordshire (taken in a winter window, so there's a bit of glare.) Readers of this blog will remember the post earlier this year, where I wrote about solving the mystery of why JL Carr's 'A Month in the Country' signs off with the words, 'Stocken, Presteigne, 1978.' Mr Danny
- [How Many?](https://ianmarchant.com/2016/05/how-many/) - Britain, we are told by Brexiteers and those who would control immigration, is full. It's a simple matter of numbers. They say that our infrastucture, our schools and hospitals, simply cannot cope with an influx of newcomers, as though this infrastructure is a God-given fact, not subject in anyway to political desicion making. So what
- [How many miles, how many?](https://ianmarchant.com/2019/06/how-many-miles-how-many/) - I know of two bilingual signposts that show Leominster with its Welsh name, Llanllieni. There’s one up on the A44 by the Fforest Inn, and the one in this picture on the Presteigne by-pass. There might be a few others, but I don’t know them. I get a lyrical kick every time I pass them,
- [I believe the children are our future...](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/i-believe-the-children-are-our-future/) - A few weeks ago, when all the snow was here, I fumed at the sight of dim-witted 'young people' wandering about in sub-Arctic conditions in just a t-shirt and without a coat on. Don't tell me they weren't cold. Last night, in Liverpool, I was provoked almost to the point of apoplexy by young people
- [That's what being an enthusiast is all about](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/thats-what-being-an-enthusiast-is-all-about/) - Yesterday, finding myself with a few hours to kill in Warwick, and in need of a breath of fresh air, I went for a walk up the flight of 21 locks at Hatton. I've never navigated these locks, but just walking up the flight to the excellent cafe at the top exhausted me. These are
- [Living on the Front Line](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/living-on-the-front-line/) - I've been putting together a compilation CD for Finbar's 17th birthday. Finbar is the son of a friend, and for the last couple of years, he's come with Your Dad to Pilton. He's a metallist by inclination, and I'm so not, and I keep bombarding him with CD's of the kind of old nonsense I
- [I'd love a bit of Green](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/12/id-love-a-bit-of-green/) - I enjoyed watching these two six sided squares discussing the legalisation of drugs today. In principle I'm with Bob Ainsworth, as you might imagine. There are so many great reasons for legalisation, I hardly know where to start. How, for example, did states accrue so much power that they feel able to dictate what their
- [Caught Red Handed](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/08/caught-red-handed/) - The first time I ever visited Northern Ireland was in 1996. I had come down the Mull of Kintyre by bus, and caught the now defunct ferry from Cambelltown to Ballycastle on the Antrim Coast. England were playing Colombia in the World Cup, which was showing live in the ferry's bar, but the scenery on
- [How I'm voting and why.](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/how-im-voting-and-why/) - I imagine that followers of this blog will have guessed by now that I'm not voting New Labour. But here we are, the night before the election, and this will be the last of the series of posts that I committed myself to putting up during the election campaign. Thank you very much to the
- [Our Cause is Your Cause](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/our-cause-is-your-cause/) - So said Gordon Brown, launching the New Party's election campaign today. Surely he meant to say, Your Cause is Our Cause; which is to say, we, as elected politicians will attempt to find out the views of voters, and reflect them in our manifestos. No; he means what he says; they need us to perpetuate
- [Funeral for a friend](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/funeral-for-a-friend/) - Yesterday, I went down to Newbury for John Fairfax's funeral. John Moat gave the funny and almost unbearably poignant opening tribute. Moat and Fairfax were Arvon's co-founders, and were best pals for almost as long as I've been alive. What I found so moving about Moat's address was the thought that everybody always thinks of
- [Soft on bankers, soft on the causes of banking](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/soft-on-bankers-soft-on-the-causes-of-banking/) - Just back after a gig in Lancaster and an all-night bimble round some deserted Cumbrian motorway service stations. I put 450 un-Green miles on the clock, so I thought I'd update on my unscientific posterwatch poll. It's good to report that I've seen a good few Green Party posters, most especially in the little village
- [How long, Lord, how long?](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/how-long-lord-how-long/) - Poor wee David Milliband. The punishment for the Iraq War goes on and on. Today he is in the papers complaining about the way the Lib Dems just hark on about it; and who can blame him? Radovan Karadzic must feel similarly. So what if the war was quite clearly illegal? So what if the
- [Why Holywood Matters](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/why-holywood-matters/) - So, I spent last autumn living in Holywood in Northern Ireland. With a lady. Now she is living with me, here in Sunny Presteigne. This morning, we awoke to the horrifying news that the 'Real' IRA had set off a car bomb outside the Palace Barracks, which is on the way from Holywood into Belfast.
- [Adonis by name...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/adonis-by-name/) - I thought it was the Real Tories who were the toffs, but actually it's the New Party who trot out their unelected peers for the benefit of the press. We've already seen a lot of dear old Mandy, and a good thing too, because the more people see of him, the more they will be
- [Top Deck, again.](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/top-deck-again/) - I've just been to Norwich to visit Minnie at UEA. Sitting together on the top deck of the No.25 bus, heading into the city, Minnie listed the ways in which students are like primary school children. 'We have a nap; we look forward to that. We eat fishfingers and beans. We watch children's TV. We
- [White Mansions? Legend of Jesse James? Hello?](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/white-mansions-legend-of-jesse-james-hello/) - I went all the way down to West Cork yesterday, to see a man about a dog. This man is a musician, and he played me White Mansions and The Legend of Jesse James, two country concept albums, written by an English songwriter called Paul Kennerly. Clapton and his band play on both albums; as
- [Four Point Plan.](https://ianmarchant.com/2017/05/four-point-plan/) - We’ve just had the first piece of General Election tat in the post, and it’s from local estate agent and current Tory incumbent, Chris Davies. At least, I think it’s from him. There’s a picture of him sitting next to the Rt Hon. Member for Maidenhead and Wargrave, but his actual name only appears in
- [Spitfires on the Line.](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/02/spitfires-on-the-line/) - I'm in the middle of making a short series for Radio Four with producer Mary Ward-Lowery about a series of journeys we're taking along the line drawn by Prof. Danny Dorling of Sheffield University which divides the north from the south. We have met some wonderful people, including the sagacious Sir Michael Darrington, esrtwhile boss
- [Radical Disgust](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/radical-disgust/) - An easy blog today. Something very strange and noteworthy would have to happen later in the day for me to want to blog anything else, so I'm going early, leaving me free to work on m'new book all day. So, I'm a Guardian reader; no huge surprise there. Saturday is my favourite day, because of
- [Newhaven Marine](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/03/newhaven-marine/) - The fabulous Jolyon Jenkins, the producer at Radio Four who is doing the show about ghost trains, sent me this excerpt from Hansard today... 3 Feb 2009 : Column 1135W Newhaven Marine Railway Station Norman Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport on what date the last passenger train departed Newhaven Harbour Marine
- [Obituary - a Poem by H. McFaddean Spume](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/01/obituary-a-poem-by-h-mcfaddean-spume/) - Obituary No one knows why, But his shits were huge. They disappeared around the bend, And left a perky brown iceberg above the water line. Hotels dreaded his residence, All too often, his huge turds Blocked their entire system. Plumbers adored him. As a nose-picker, he was second to none; A skill he was happy
- [Lock Keepers Inn](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/01/lock-keepers-inn/) - On a beautiful afternoon in September last year, my Beloved and I, together with her six year old daughter, strolled along a canalised section of the River Lagan in South Belfast to where one of the locks is being restored. This is part of an ambitious long term scheme to restore the Lagan Navigation up
- [Off the Page](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/off-the-page/) - As I'm a guest on the Radio Four show 'Off the Page' today, it suddenly occured to me that I might, just might, get some increased traffic here, and that first time visitors might wish to see something other than my discussion with my Italian translator, or my tribute to Sylvia Plath. In fact, it
- [Mandelson the Destroyer](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/mandelson-the-destroyer/) - I guess I thought that The New Party might just shut the fuck up for the next few months until they are consigned to the dustbin of history, but no. The First Secretary of State, Peter 'Lord' Mandelson, who has responsibility for both business and universities, has announced his 'new framework' for university reform. Universities
- [Off The Page, Vietnamese food, 2666 and all that...](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/10/off-the-page-vietnamese-food-2666-and-all-that/) - I've just been to that London for a recording of the Radio Four series 'Off The Page', which is due for broadcast sometime in November. My fellow guests were the excellent Melissa Cole, and the legendary Simon Fanshawe. We were debating the demise of the pub, and hopefully it will make for a fun listen.
- [Headhunters](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/09/headhunters/) - Not really an entry, as such, but another link which I felt my readers must see... The Headhunters Railway Museum and Barbers Shop in Enniskillen. Who amongst you will be able to resist the temptation... As their website says, 'Whether you are a railway enthusiast, former railway employee or just a child brought up on
- [Ian Mercher is half of Your Dad](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/09/ian-mercher-is-half-of-your-dad/) - Chas is coming to Presteigne on Friday, because Your Dad are playing at a wedding near here. I love playing weddings; they give me an oppurtunity to behave as badly as I like, and get paid for the privilege. I was batting around on Chas's website this morning, and found a link to the piece
- [Washday Blues](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/09/washday-blues/) - Charlie is living with her old Dad at the moment, which is top, but we are both on our uppers, and I'm currently unable to afford the services of Rachel at LaundryToTu, the internet launderette at the end of Presteigne's historic High Street. Rachel is a sweetie, but as dim as a Toc H lamp,
- [My old Mum's habit, world peace, an end to crime, etc.](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/09/my-old-mums-habit-world-peace-an-end-to-crime-etc/) - My old Mum is hanging out at present, and it's not fun times for anybody. The doctor has said that her new knee is working fine, and so he's taken her off the morphine patches. If she could bend her knees, she'd be huddled in the corner, sweating, rocking to and fro, and grasping them.
- [Holywood swinging still](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/08/holywood-swinging-still/) - Here I am, back in Northern Ireland, in the town slash Belfast suburb of Holywood. I'm blogging on my notebook outside The Coffee Yard, Holywood's hottest coffee shop, which is making me feel quite ridiculously C21. It's a long way from Elda's Colombian Coffee Shop where I usually spend my mornings. Holywood is the nearest
- [Stoned man finds God shock.](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/06/stoned-man-finds-god-shock/) - I’ve been looking through some old stuff, and I found this little bit from what was part of my notes for The Fool’s Errand, which is my answer to ‘Smile’ or ‘The Teenage Opera’ i.e., unfinished. But this seemed worth posting... Now, you might think you are an athiest. You might believe with all your
- [Coming Round The Mountain](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/03/coming-round-the-mountain/) - Monique came to stay on Sunday, after she had been the night before to a fellow tantrica's Hen night in an 18th Century Vicarage outside Hereford. She wanted me to take her to a stone circle, so I did. The best known stone circle round here is the Four Stones at Kinnerton, in the Radnor
- [This whole Oz and James thing](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/this-whole-oz-and-james-thing/) - Well, I guess it has to be addressed; is it feasible that somebody read 'The Longest Crawl' and then projected the idea onto the hilarious duo? Well; yes it is. Even the graphics showing their progress bear an uncanny resemblance to the original cover. On the other hand, since this is now their third series
- [Night Chemistry (and Duck Decoys)](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/night-chemistry-and-duck-decoys/) - Coming out of Liverpool last night, and driving along the M53/M56, I was reminded of how technology and industry can bring real beauty to the night. The chemical plants on the north side of the Mersey, a series of tangled grey pipes, tubes and retorts by day, turn at night into a vision of loveliness, like a star cluster fallen to
- [Local author in quiz night cheat horror](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/03/local-author-in-quiz-night-cheat-horror/) - This time last week, I was playing hard ball table quiz in the Holywood RFC, a few miles outside Belfast. The quiz had been set by the Philosophy Society from Sullivan School, which is opposite the club. At least half of the contestants were sixth formers from the school; nice teenagers, with floppy woollen bags
- [Popular, but hard to get.](https://ianmarchant.com/2016/05/popular-but-hard-to-get/) - How does a researcher get to find the obscure books they need when they live outside of London? And why do I know what my rising sign is?
- [Real, Decent, never Ordinary. My Ranting CV](https://ianmarchant.com/2016/06/real-decent-never-ordinary-my-ranting-cv/) - I wonder what Mr. Nigel Farage meant in his speech at the UKIP victory rally that 'Leave was a win for Real Decent Ordinary People?' Does he mean working class English white people, I've been wondering? If by real he means English, then I am real. Lord, am I real. I can trace my family
- [On the Top Deck Three](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/on-the-top-deck-three/) - A long long day followed by a short Parallel Lines-y link-y post. Down to Brissol today to record voice links for the Radio Four doco 'On The Top Deck', which goes out at 11am on Wednesday 21st of January. Emerging from the studio on Whiteladies Road, I remembered that I'd been here before, in May
- [Twelfth Night is not Plough Monday](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/twelfth-night-is-not-plough-monday/) - Tonight is Twelfth Night; the last night of the twelve days of Christmas, and the night before Epiphany . All the kids in Presteigne have gone back to school this morning; which is unfair, in my view, since strictly speaking Christmas isn't actually over till the twelve drummers have drummed. On the island of Foula,
- [Midnight Lady](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/midnight-lady/) - Last night, we went to a party in Presteigne, ate cassoulet and generally had a nice mild time. This got me thinking about mild New Year's, and how some people don't like New Year because it can, on occasion, be anti-climactic. Still the most anti-climactic New Year I've ever spent was Millennium night. The thing
- [Ownership](https://ianmarchant.com/2017/05/ownership/) - This picture is from about 1890/1900, taken from Wales, and looking into England - the bridge marks the boundary. The first house on the right is ours. You can see that the track in front of our house leads down to a ford, at that time still in use, parallel to the Lugg Bridge. There
- [Jolly exciting developments](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/03/jolly-exciting-developments/) - Probably. I haven't blogged properly for a while, because there doesn't seem much point, since old Perry Venus is working on a revamp of my site. It's to become a 'self-hosted' blog, and although I'm not utterly sure what that means, it is jolly exciting. And he tells me that he'll be working on it
- [Dreadful Old Man](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/dreadful-old-man/) - When old Perry Venus and I were out doing The Longest Crawl, we met a lot of lovely people. One rosy-cheeked old gentleman who we met in a Worcestershire cherry orchard could not have been more charming or more helpful when telling us about the old days in the hop yards. We said goodbye to
- [In the Woods](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/12/in-the-woods/) - The BBC wish to make it clear that distilling alcohol in woods is strictly illegal. One of the excellent Paul Williams photos that didn't make it into 'The Longest Crawl.'
- [Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/07/wilkommen-bienvenue-welcome/) - Hello and welcome to new rage webpage! It combine blog and webpage! For many week Perry work on it! Me too! Now Perry go on holiday! And I move house! Broadband not so good! Broadband bad! Am in interweb cafe! On laptop! Which only allow Chinese English! Bum! But reader, we hope you like! We
- [Ownership as trust](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/08/ownership-as-trust/) - This is a policy idea; based on discussions with my friend and colleague at BCU, Gregory Leadbetter, who has done the heavy lifting. These days Greg is a fine poet and teacher of creative writing, but in a previous life he studied law at Trinity Cambridge, and became a solicitor. In fact, he still appears
- [Still ill...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/11/still-ill/) - No one here is busting out with good health. My wife has the remains of a month long earth-shaking cough, my step-daughter has had Winter Vomiting Virus, and been off school all day, and I got visited by a lovely migraine, which took hold just as I arrived at Birmingham City University for a day
- [Why get your head together in the country?](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/05/why-get-your-head-together-in-the-country/) - My idea in renaming the blog bit of the website has root in my new (still in production) book, 'A Hero For High Times', and it is, at least in part, a reaction to my writing and thinking about the exodus of the hip ruralist diaspora from the cities in the sixties and seventies that
- [How to Get Your Head Together in the Country](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/03/how-to-get-your-head-together-in-the-country/) - I'm having a meeting with old Perry Venus in Hay about updating the website. I think that the night thing has had its day. Something of the Night will stand or fall without my feeble attempts to promote the thing, whereas my new project, which is nearing fruition, is waiting to take over. The new
- [Constitutionally odd](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/04/constitutionally-odd/) - Last night, Friday night, my wife and I came back to Radnorshire from Brussels, via the Eurostar. I'd never been to Brussels before, and I guess I wasn't quite prepared for how odd a place Belgium is. I also wasn't prepared for how great the Magritte Museum was. There was one small black and white
- [Migraine and the sense of smell.](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/03/migraine-and-the-sense-of-smell/) - It's good, I always think, to have a picture at the top of a blog post. I looked online for 'migraine aura', and found some excellent pictures which very accurately capture the experience; so much so, that I couldn't bear to look at them. If you are not a sufferer from 'classical migraine', and you
- [Teachers getting lost](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/02/teachers-getting-lost/) - When I'm teaching, I often tell my students not to worry about originality. 'Originality,' I tell 'em, 'is a shibboleth. The only writer who we know for sure was original was Homer. After that, it all gets a bit fuzzy. So don't sweat it.' And mostly, I mean it. But I did think I'd had
- [Lumb Bank week in the snow.](https://ianmarchant.com/2013/01/lumb-bank-week-in-the-snow/) - Just back from a wonderful week tutoring an Arvon course at Lumb Bank, in the hills above Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. All week, the snow stayed about a foot deep, until Friday night, when it snowed heavily again. Staggeringly beautiful. I wished that I could paint, but I can't. Hopefully, one of our lovely students
- [What I am wearing ](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/12/what-i-am-wearing/) - My hair shaven short, by design, though shaped by cruel circumstance. One of two pairs of bespoke Anglo-American spectacles, each identical in shape, but different in colour; a black frame for distance, and a horn-rimmed pair for reading. A home-knitted Falmouth Navy coloured roll neck gansey, in a pattern called ‘Polperro Musician’, over a maroon
- [Solar Eye](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/06/solar-eye/) - It's not often that I do any product placement on m'blog, but for my great friend Pete Smith, and for the rather wonderful Solar Eye, I'm happy to make an exception. Pete the Blacksmith has appeared in my blog on occasion as a man who likes to draw on his trusty old briar and speculate
- [Novels and Kindle.](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/07/novels-and-kindle/) - Hope springs eternal, especially in the hearts of mid-listers. This week my novels 'In Southern Waters' and 'The Battle for Dole Acre' are republished for the Kindle, and hope insists that maybe this time they'll go viral. It's not the money, though that is always acceptable; it's the readers I'd like. 'In Southern Waters' did
- [Radio HSBC](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/04/radio-hsbc/) - We all popped into Hereford today, to buy some creosote to get over my clothes and into my eyes and also to some extent on our ricketty backyard fence. Also, I planned to visit the Hereford HSBC branch while we were there. My old Mum was kind enough to send me a cheque for my
- [Us (us us us us) and Them (them them them them)](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/03/us-us-us-us-us-and-them-them-them-them-them/) - It has been a very interesting experience making the programme for Radio Four about the North/South divide. As I followed the line across England on the map drawn up by Prof. Danny Dorling of Sheffield University, I became convinced that the divide, unsurpisingly really, has some substance. Mostly, though, I was struck by the fact
- [Qualcosa della notte... (according to Babel Fish, anyway)](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/03/qualcosa-della-notte-according-to-babel-fish-anyway/) - I heard today that DeAgostini have offered to publish Something of the Night in Italy, and that the excellent Claudio Silipigni is once again to be my 'translator', just as he was for 'The Longest Crawl'. I couldn't be more pleased. It says 'translator' in the book, but, as I can't speak a word of
- [Apocalypse Weekend](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/02/apocalypse-weekend/) - Now, here's a thing. That great man Cosmic Smiles has posted the whole of the 'Apocalypse Weekend' Sheep Music feature film on You Tube. I wrote most of the 'script'. The crew had been filming the festival for a few years, and wanted to try their hands at something a bit more structured. My idea
- [Marchant, Pembroke... (well, SDUC Lampeter, the Poly of Wales, Lancaster and Birmingham City University, really)](https://ianmarchant.com/2012/02/marchant-pembroke-well-sduc-lampeter-the-poly-of-wales-lancaster-and-birmingham-city-university-really/) - On Wednesday evening I did a talk with Richard Beard under the auspices of the National Academy of Writing at Pembroke College, Cambridge, England, Yurp. The college were kind enough to invite my wife too. To say the college made a fuss of us would be an understatement. They could not have been lovelier. The
- [Something of the Night.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/12/something-of-the-night/) - The new book is out. I've always done an introduction to the books, and posted them on this site; this is a first pass, really. I got the idea for a book about the night in 2008, and envisaged taking a similar approach to the one I took in Parallel Lines and The Longest Crawl.
- [Puch Maxi Moped, tit rub (or tit-rub), triple cooked chips.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/12/puch-maxi-moped-tit-rub-or-tit-rub-triple-cooked-chips/) - Once again. I've been looking at the search terms whereby people find this site. Luckily, the most popular search term is Ian Marchant, and the various permutations thereof. But what fascinates me is the other stuff people come looking for. People visit this site looking for things like information on where to find the pub
- [HSBC and the virtue of profit.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/12/hsbc-and-the-virtue-of-profit/) - I think this blog is going to be about economics. I'm not an economist. But since they seem to know bugger all anyway, I don't see why any entirely unqualified bloke-in-the-pub shouldn't chip in, and make just as little sense as anyone else. The global economy is almost five times the size it was
- [Good weekend so far, touch wood.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/12/good-weekend-so-far-touch-wood/) - We drove to Cambridge yesterday to pick up some stuff, and on the way I bought the Radio Times and i, both of which had favouable things to say about the psycho-geography show on Radio Three. When we got home,there was a parcel waiting, with my first copy of 'Something of the Night' inside. Stayed
- [The Zep and I](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/11/the-zep-and-i/) - Never been that bothered about the Zep, and I could do with some advice from those who were down with the whole big-haired squeeky voiced cod-Crowleyian ting. In m'new book, 'Something of the Night', I write quite a bit about music, and I'm trying to put together a Spotify playlist of all the songs I
- [What it says on the card...](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/10/what-it-says-on-the-card/) - I like very much the idea that the Chinese are to be invited to put a few bob into Europe's hat in order to solve the 'Eurozone' crisis, and have an image of what the meeting where they decide whether or not to chip in might be like. One of the members of the commitee
- [Greggs vs. Growth.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/10/greggs-vs-growth/) - This is Sir Michael Darrington. If anybody knows anything about growth, it's him, because for over 20 years he ran Greggs, to whose products I owe a great deal of my personal growth - and I don't mean that in any spiritual sense. I heard him today on 'Any Answers' on Radio Four. He was
- [Putative tit rub](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/08/putative-tit-rub/) - I was talking to my editor today about the proofs of 'Something of The Night.' 'The proof reader,' he said to me, 'has an issue with the phrase 'putative tit rub.' 'Oh?' I said. 'What's the problem?' 'Well, he says he thinks you've misused 'putative.' He says that it means, 'commonly regarded as being''. He
- [Secret Garden Parties](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/07/secret-garden-parties/) - Here's a lovely photo of the author dressed very much en trende. The autumn is going to be all about knitwear, in my view. These woollen lederhosen, or wollenhosen as I guess we should call them were knitted for me by the ladies and gentlemen of the Village Hall Knitting Circle, in the Village Hall
- [John Fairfax](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/john-fairfax/) - I've just heard the sad news that John Fairfax, co-founder of the Arvon Foundation, died over the weekend. When I was Co-Centre Director (with Monique Roffey) of the Arvon centre at Totleigh Barton, I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions. He was a great man, probably better known as a teacher than
- [This is the moment](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/07/this-is-the-moment/) - For as long as anyone can remember, your educated liberal middle classes, of whom I guess I am a member, have despised the red tops (and the Mail and Express). They manipulate the news in such a way as to encourage fear in the British Public; fear obviously earns them money, and money, and power,
- [Time to get over it](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/06/time-to-get-over-it/) - Well, 'Something of the Night' has gone to the typesetters, so soon I'll be correcting the proofs. From now on in the process, changes have to be kept to a minimum, so I've had to accept that I'm not going to be able to use the lyrics from 'This Woman's Work'. I'm sorry I haven't
- [and yes I said yes I will Yes. ](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/04/and-yes-i-said-yes-i-will-yes/) - Still looking to get a message to Kate Bush. Found my grandfather Albert Bulbeck though, a story which deserves a post of its own. Which will follow. When I've found a way to communicate with Miss Bush. In the meantime.... This business of Kate Bush and permission has been somewhat in the news, because she
- [Looking for Albert (and Kate)](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/03/looking-for-albert-and-kate/) - It's a funny old world, and no mistake. This week I sent out a call on Facebook for help in my quest to get in touch with Kate Bush. I'm a long time fan; I can remember watching 'Wuthering Heights' on TOTP back in 1978, probably at my friend Ian Quance's house in the foothills
- [Sometime Around Midnight.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/02/sometime-around-midnight/) - Today, I'm sitting around thinking about time. In our day, of course, time fell wanking to the floor, but was nevertheless on our side. Now it seems to gallop by. In horse racing terms, we are coming round Tattenham Corner, and thinking about cracking the whip. This rather fabulous song by The Airborne Toxic Event
- [Yourself](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/02/is-there-anything-more-ourselves-can-do-for-yourself/) - I've been trying to work out for myself when people in call centres started calling customers 'yourself' and referring to themselves as 'ourselves' and asking at the end of calls 'Is there anything more that ourselves can do for yourself today?' Yes there fucking well is. Stop calling me yourself. Presumably they've been told to
- [Moped Lads](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/01/moped-lads/) - I'm not sure that I'm supposed to give away what future shows in the Radio Four series 'The Completists' are actually about... but here's some oblique clues as to the subject of the next episode... I used to ride one of these babies myself you know, to no great effect, I'm told by my friends...
- [Dreadful inexcusable blunder.](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/01/dreadful-inexcusable-blunder/) - I'm sitting at my computer holding my head in my hands, groaning, rending my garments and so on. This coming Sunday sees the broadcast of the second episode of the series I'm currently doing for Radio Four, which is called 'The Completists.' In this episode, I claim to have completed a set of achievements myself,
- [In case of fire...](https://ianmarchant.com/2011/01/in-case-of-fire/) - I got a call today from a journalist on The Sunday Express, who wanted to talk about the series I've just done for Radio Four, which is called 'The Completists', and which starts on Sunday 23rd January at 2.45; right after Gardener's Question Time, and before the Classic serial, and an ideal time for a
- [St. Steven's Playlist](https://ianmarchant.com/2008/12/st-stevens-playlist/) - It's Boxing Day; my daughters arrive tomorrow, and today I've had a day of thrilling idleness. And what better way to spend a few idle hours than batting around on You Tube? First off, the greatest pop single ever. Or do you know better? The British people consistently vote Queen's excreble Bohemian Rhapsody as the
- [May your days...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/12/may-your-days/) - All the girls are here for Christmas, despite the snow. In fact, now we're all here, and the supplies are in, and the shopping done, and the tree trimmed and the house looking fab since the girls (and boyfriend) have decorated it, the snow is starting to look like a good thing. There are already
- [We are Your Dad](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/12/we-are-your-dad/) - Here's a photo from our 2006 Las Vegas Comeback special. We're still not sure how to upload clips from the show. We're still working on it. But what you will find here is a link to the Elderly Rhymers rap. Rapping is marvellous. I can't believe we've never ventured into these waters before. I'm sure
- [In the Night Kitchen](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/in-the-night-kitchen/) - I've been teaching on the Creative Writing MA at Liverpool John Moores University for three weeks now, and I emerge from the workshop at 9pm starving hungry; and have been looking for somewhere good to eat. The first week, I went to an Indian place; the curry was a bit fussed about, but it was
- [Completing the Set](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/12/completing-the-set/) - Just got a commision from Radio Four to make a series about people who've collected the whole set. That is to say, they've done every Airfix model, they've visited every League Football ground etc etc. We are looking to complete the set of people who have completed the set, so if you, dear reader, or
- [Quiz, home and away.](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/11/quiz-home-and-away/) - I like a quiz, me, and so does my sainted wife. We met at a pub quiz, and impressed one another early on with our quiz credentials; she had been on the Trinity College team on University Challenge, and was a grand finalist on 15 to 1, whereas I have twice been the subject of
- [Kick out Your Dad, Mother figure.](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/11/kick-out-your-dad-mother-figure/) - 14 years ago this very night I met my legendary partner in crime Christopher Charles Ambler in the bar of The Yorkshire House in Lancaster. He came up to me and said, 'You're the only man in Lancaster who can sing Middle of the Road properly. Do you want to do some gigs?' Who could
- [Anti-antidisestablishmentarianism](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/anti-antidisestablishmentarianism/) - So, today it's all been about constitutional and electoral reform. The New Party promise to deliver the things they promised to deliver 13 years ago with a majority of 160. The flagship idea is a referendum on the Alternative Vote, which is not proportionate, and which would favour the New Party themselves, and another on
- [Off with their heads...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/11/off-with-their-heads/) - I like a nice Royal wedding, me. To be honest, I quite like weddings per se. But I'm the father of daughters, and I think I'd worry a lot if one of my girls had not lived with a partner before taking the plunge, so, as if it were any of my business, it looks
- [Should I have listened? (An experiment)](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/should-i-have-listened-an-experiment/) - Rushing around this morning getting ready to give a talk at Coventry University tomorrow, I thought I might try and post a poll, for no other reason than you can post polls on Word Press, and I wanted to see how they work. But what to ask? Then I remembered a day in 1973. I
- [Microsoft Launch Party Poll](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/09/microsoft-launch-party-poll/) - Please have a look at this You Tube clip promoting the idea of launch parties for Windows Seven, and then consider your answer to the poll. We will be forwarding the results to Microsoft. Your vote really counts.
- [The strange death of Labour in England](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/the-strange-death-of-labour-in-england/) - I was breakfasting in Elda's Colombian Coffee House recently, chatting with my pal Nat, who told me about life out on the stump. Nat knows a bit about it, having stood for Parliament on several occasions in the Liberal interest. He has no ambition to be an MP, but he's a long term Lib Dem
- [On the road again](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/on-the-road-again/) - Sadly, I won't be able to watch tonight's final Prime Ministerial debate, as I'm doing a Your Dad gig in Lancaster. And then I'm going to spend the night hanging out at Killington Lake services for my new book. Which endangers my daily election blog project. So here's a mere placemarker, as it were. Lots
- [Hang 'em all](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/hang-em-all/) - As readers of my blog during the election will probably have gathered, I'm not exactly a fan of New Labour. It's not so much the erosion of civil liberties, the disastrous handling of the economy which could take generations to repair, the building of runways and coal fired power stations, the identification of education with
- [Vote Labour!](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/vote-labour/) - Driving to Kidderminster station today and listening to Today, I heard a report from the East London constituency of Barking about how Margaret Hodge is fighting off opposition from the BNP. A similar situation pertains in Stoke South, and if I lived in either place, I would happily vote Labour. Hodge, together with John Cruddas
- [Bonkers!](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/bonkers/) - That's how things are at the moment! Working like a dog on the new book, BCU, Radio Four, etc etc. , so no time to blog at present. But Spume writes to say that he's managing to post everyday... do drop by in my temporary absence.
- [A Load of Sunday Night Night Music](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/11/a-load-of-sunday-night-night-music/) - One of the things I like about writing non-fiction is that it is easier to deal with coincidences than it is when you're writing fiction. Coincidence does exist in fiction, of course, but you need to be a master to make it seem entirely credible... and, er... well, anyway, I like writing non-fiction. So, I
- [Don't...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/10/dont/) - ... which, famously, was Auberon Waugh's advice to anyone thinking of writing a book. And sometimes, you can't help but agree. But I have at last finished my new book, Something of the Night. In fact, I finished it at the beginning of September, and then ran away to France for a week, to a
- [Another shitty fucking day of life](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/another-shitty-fucking-day-of-life/) - Back in the day, when I managed the Quinto bookshop at 48 Charing Cross Road (which address, psycho-geographers might argue, encodes the famous old shop at No. 84), I used to catch the 38 bus back home to Hackney from outside the Central St. Martin's building next to Foyles. One dark freezing foggy evening in
- [Solstice at Stonehenge](https://ianmarchant.com/2008/12/solstice-at-stonehenge/) - Well, that was a remarkable night. I drove from Presteigne down to Stonehenge, arriving on the stroke of midnight; and quickly realised that I had blundered horribly by not taking a torch. You would imagine, wouldn't you, that somebody writing a book about the night would remember to carry a torch about with them? Not
- [The Presteigne One](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/06/the-presteigne-one/) - On the morning of Thursday 17th of June, I was having a bit of a lie-in. I’d been at an all day meeting in Birmingham on the day before, and had finished the meeting with a blinding migraine. Getting back home to Presteigne had proved something of a challenge, and I needed to sleep the
- [Spume goes solo](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/spume-goes-solo/) - Exciting Spume news here!
- [My Dead Dad, by one half of Your Dad](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/my-dead-dad-by-one-half-of-your-dad/) - My Dad was a man without qualities. He died at 11.25pm on May 6th, 2010, just as the election results were starting to come in. As his ultimate wife said to me a few days ago, 'Ah loved him, but he loathed everything and everybody. He had a narcissitic personality disorder. I hope you never
- [Have I told you lately?](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/have-i-told-you-lately/) - Today, I've been writing my lovely new book and reading student work, not to mention watching a bit of the Snooker world championship. My Beloved pointed out that snooker is a bit like the election, in that the players spend much of their time trying to make life difficult for their opponents, rather than doing
- [Sod The Lot](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/05/sod-tomorrow/) - At the start of the election, I decided to blog something every day. And somehow, I've managed it, thus far. And most days I've managed to get riled up enough to have something to say. But for some reason, every Sunday I get filled with indifference. The sight of puir wee Gordon being smuggled between
- [The Seventies revisited and other matters](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/the-seventies-revisited-and-other-matters/) - Hard to know where to go tonight. The news is full of the IMF coming in to prop up failing economies, Lib-Lab pacts, swingeing public spending cuts, and Blair Peach. I guess that takes us here... And, yes, I was there. It's coming back... Then I read about David Cameron being attacked for wanting to
- [Seems quite simple to me...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/seems-quite-simple-to-me/) - For the longest time, I've been a supporter of the Green Party. Sometimes I've paid my subs, and sometimes not. Sometimes I've been active, and sometimes (usually, if I'm honest), I've been supine. But for the last lord knows how long, I have been, by and large and on the whole, a Green. This means,
- [Sod it again](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/sod-it-again/) - Another Sunday, and another set of psephological puzzles. Cleggy has come out and said that the Lib Dems wouldn't support keeping Gordon in No. 10 if the New Party got the lowest number of votes. You would imagine that Gordon wouldn't want to stay in No. 10 if he got the lowest number of votes,
- [Not St. George after all](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/not-st-george-after-all/) - I was pretty sure what I wanted to blog today, which was The English Democrats' idea for an English Parliament. I don't like the English Democrats, because, although they say that they're a kind of English SNP or Plaid, they are not. They have the usual dumb stuff about immigration and the Common Market that
- [Undecided?](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/undecided/) - Here's a little thing that might help. I'd be interested to know how people got on... all comments published, as ever. And if you think a blog should be longer than just one link, and if you think that the SNP and Plaid Cymru should have been represented inthe Prime Ministerial Debates, here's some lovely
- [The Sun Says....](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/the-sun-says/) - "I don't want him running my country and I don't want him deciding who the prime minister is," says former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie, of Nick Clegg. Well, that's lovely. The Sun loved Blair all the time he was bombing people, then switched to Cameron, because Murdoch felt the Real Tories hold little brief for
- [You what?](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/you-what/) - I'm a bit fed up tonight. After a long day in Perry Barr, (where a very rough straw poll taken amongst my students showed them leaning strongly towards the Lib Dems) and a long drive home (still no New Party posters up anywhere,), I got back to find that the minor ear operation I was
- [Oh, sod it...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/oh-sod-it/) - ...after all, Sunday Night is supposed to be Music Night here on Radio Free Radnorshire. I was going to blog a rant about the inequity of a voting system that might see the New Party get the smallest number of votes and still get the largest number of seats, but that's based on 'uniform swings',
- [If it was just about Celebs...](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/if-it-was-just-about-celebs/) - ... I really wouldn't know what to do. After all, today Cameron was out with Gazza Bazza, who wrote one of my favourite songs of the last I don't know how long... Whilst Eddie Izzard has been out and about on behalf of the New Party... And we all know that John Cleese supports the
- [Eyjafjallajokull](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/eyjafjallajokull/) - I loved the televised debate, me, but then I'm a political anorak, so I would. Like everyone, I thought Cleggy was the winner, though I thought My Little David did best on body language, whilst Puir Gordon was... well, a war criminal who should be on trial with Blair and Bush in The Hague. But
- [Middle England - an entirely unscientific poll](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/middle-england-an-entirely-unscientific-poll/) - Today I drove from Presteigne to Perry Barr in North West Birmingham, a drive I make at least once a week. It's a very beautiful drive, until you reach the M5 just outside Droitwich, after which you enter the West Midlands conurbation. The trip crosses several Parliamentary constituencies, and I thought it might be interesting
- [Kemptown Lady](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/brighton-boys/) - A short blog this evening, as I'm nuts deep in the new book. It's not often that I wished I still lived In Brighton... in fact, it's only at Electiontide. Back in the eighties, after my RCPGB(ML) days, I was for a couple of years an activist in Brighton Green Party. Although we travelled hopefully,
- [Gordon! Gordon! Gordon! Out! Out! Out!](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/04/gordon-gordon-gordon-out-out-out/) - There was a biggish demo in London today, against public spending cuts and redundancies in the public sector. On my wall, I have an 18th Century print of Canute attempting to hold back the sea, and this demo reminded me of that. You can demonstrate all you like, but it won't make a ha'porth of
- [Ghost trains?](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/03/ghost-trains/) - I was wondering if any readers had any info on ghost trains? By which I mean 'Parly trains'; those services which companies are forced to run because it's cheaper to run them than to go to all the bother of closing them down. The most famous example is the weekly Stockport to Stalybridge service; but
- [I love my students](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/02/i-love-my-students/) - Loves 'em, I do. Please take a moment to have a look at some of their blogs, which are listed on the right hand side of my blog under BCU Life Writing. They are writing them as part of the practise which they are doing for the Life Writing course I'm currently teaching at Birmingham
- [A True Star, a Wizard.](https://ianmarchant.com/2010/02/a-true-star-a-wizard/) - Here I am, back In Presteigne after a quick visit to that London with my boyfs to see Todd Rundgren perform his 1973 masterpiece album 'A Wizard, A True Star,' which is, at least arguably, simultaneously psychedelia's high water mark, and one of the greatest blue eyed soul albums of the 70's. Todd hasn't really
- [Climate Change Sceptics Right!](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/12/climate-change-sceptics-right/) - No, but let's imagine that they are. Let's imagine, as Copenhagen comes shuddering to what promises to be an appalling anti-climax, that the tiny minority of scientists who don't believe in anthropogenic climate change are right. Let's imagine that their research, almost entirely funded by the oil industry, the coal industry and the Saudis, is
- [760x151, your teeth are like stars, roger kite philosophy presteigne](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/12/760x151-your-teeth-are-like-stars-roger-kite-philosophy-presteigne/) - I'm just coming up to a year of posting stuff (occasionally intermittantly, I admit); and in a week or so I'm over to Perry's for a bit of a web-site zhoosh up, so the thing should be slightly different come the New Year, with dozens of exciting new features. Looking through the most popular search
- [Not Lost in Translation](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/not-lost-in-translation/) - 'The Longest Crawl' is being translated into Italian at the moment by a guy called Claudio, for publication in the spring. Every few days, Claudio sends me an e-mail, to ask about problems he is facing. A few days ago, for example, he ran this one past me: 'On page 9, where you say “How
- [Thylvia](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/thylvia/) - A correspondant, a noted crime writer, contacted me today re. my Sylvia Plath clerihew, which I recited to him a few years ago, in a taxi up to Lumb Bank after a few beers in Hebden Bridge, and with which I've managed to cause a great deal of upset over the years. I sent him
- [19 Cannabis Deaths per annum?](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/11/19-cannabis-deaths-per-annum/) - According to a table of drug harm accompanying a piece by the excellent Prof. David 'Nut by name but not by nature' Nutt in today's Guardian (and I'm sorry, but this table hasn't been reproduced in the online version, so far as I can see), there are 19 deaths from cannabis use per annum in
- [Watching the ships go by](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/09/watching-the-ships-go-by/) - One of the things that you can do on a WordPress blog is see which of the links that you post get clicks. To my horror, no one, exactly no one, has clicked on the link I posted a couple of days ago to the ShipAIS website. My friends, you are quite simply bonkers. AIS
- [Arvon Blog Visitors](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/08/arvon-blog-visitors/) - Hello! We are looking at my blog! ...which was my shortest, and, I like to imagine, shittest post ever, outdoing by far the poll where I asked people to choose between Uriah Heep and Nat King Cole; and even leaving the post where I put up a link to Judy Tzuke nowhere in sight in
- [If it's Sunday Night, it's still music night here on Radio Free Radnorshire](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/06/if-its-sunday-night-its-still-music-night-here-on-radio-free-radnorshire/) - Well, after my protracted period of silence, here I am with blog three in five days. I'm on fire baby. And since it is, after all, Sunday night, I return to my slight habit of posting a few music links for your delectation/annoyance. Five songs, in reducing order of hipness... First up, just so that
- [Lick Spittle](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/06/lick-spittle/) - After my close-ish shave with Hazel Blears earlier this year, (blogs passim), I was slightly concerned when I felt an almost infinitesimal but nonetheless discernable increase in my levels of respect for her. Her resignation from the cabinet on the eve of the recent elections showed, I felt, an honest acceptance of the fact that
- [Your teeth are like stars...](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/03/your-teeth-are-like-stars/) - ...they come out at night, har har. I thought it might be fun to have a whole bunch of teeth out on Tuesday, and the good people at the Dental Access Centre in Hereford agreed with me, so that's what we did. They'd promised me intra-venous valium; promised me, they had. It was the one
- [Are you ready to rock?](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/03/are-you-ready-to-rock/) - I've not slept much these last 48 hours, what with one thing and another. I'm just back from Northern Ireland, and I have so much to write about, and so little useful brain activity, that it's best I just put up a few Sunday night favourites and then slide into the blissful arms of Hypnos
- [Chelsea Girls are the best in the world for company](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/chelsea-girls-are-the-best-in-the-world-for-company/) - One of the most important characteristics a writer needs is the ability to be alone, to be happy in your own company. I've been writing all day (that is to say, the 24th February 2009), working on a play idea, which is based very loosely on the recording of The Stone Roses' second album. For
- [Gentlemen, The Queen!](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/gentlemen-the-queen/) - I've just got back from The Mayor of Presteigne's Annual Fund Raising Sunday Lunch, where I had been asked to give a short after-dinner speech. I like doing this kind of thing, and I'm starting to relax into it. I wasn't always an accomplished speech maker. For example, way back in the day, I was
- [Sunday Night is Music Night here on Radio Free Radnorshire](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/02/sunday-night-is-music-night-here-on-radio-free-radnorshire/) - For a few months now, I've been chatting with my pal Mark Williams about setting up an internet streaming radio station, based here in my sophisticated apartment in downtown Presteigne. Mark is a top geezer. He's done loads of jobs in the music biz, including being Press Officer for Stiff Records, and, unimaginably far back
- [Calling Hazel Blears](https://ianmarchant.com/2009/01/calling-hazel-blears/) - Went down to that London again today, to do some more recording for the forthcoming Radio Four programme 'On The Top Deck'. We went to interview a senior Labour MP in his office, who, discretion being the better part of valour, I'd best not name. Bix Biederbecke was playing on his office stereo as we
- [Top Deck Two](https://ianmarchant.com/2008/12/top-deck-two/) - Thursday started just like Monday; the drive to Leominster in darkness to catch the train down to Newport, and then onto London in the company of hard-working business people tapping frantically into their laptops and barking orders down their mobile phones. Once again, we (my producer Jolyon Jenkins and I) were recording more stuff for
- [Top Deck](https://ianmarchant.com/2008/12/top-deck/) - A long day in Middlesex recording a radio programme about kids going mental on the top decks of buses after school. If you've never bimbled round Greenford on a bus full of teenagers kissing their teeth at you any time you try to ask them a question, you've never lived. One of the boys, aged
- [Nos Da!](https://ianmarchant.com/2008/12/hello-world-2/) - Another winter's night in Mid Wales smoking with Perry Venus and listening to Kraut Rock. We've moved on from thirty two years ago when we started doing this together in that back then we did it by day as well as by night. As well as puffing on our trusty pipes and listening to Amon

## Pages

- [Biography](https://ianmarchant.com/biography-ian-marchant/) - Born a week before Elvis joined the Army, Ian Marchant was originally from Newhaven in East Sussex, and lived with his family in neither England, nor Wales, but Radnorshire, until his death in November 2025. In the 1980's, he sang in various unimaginably obscure bands, wrote up the results of horse races in bookmakers’ shops,
- [One Fine Day. A Bibliography.](https://ianmarchant.com/bibliography/) - Books read and referred to. Ackroyd, Peter – Albion (Chatto and Windus, 2002) Addison, Joseph ed. Joseph Meek– The DeCoverley Papers (Dent, 1920) Armstrong, J.R. - A History of Sussex (Phillimore, 1974) Ashley, Maurice – The English Civil War (Sutton, 1990) Ashton, T.S. - An Economic History of England, the Eighteenth Century (Michael Joseph 1954)
- [One Fine Day](https://ianmarchant.com/one-fine-day/) - The best way to buy One Fine Day is through your local independant bookshop. They'll be able to order it for if it's not in stock. The big chain bookshops will also be able to get it in for you. The best way to buy online is here...
- [Fun with Your Dad](https://ianmarchant.com/your-dad/) - . These are the digital remains of Your Dad, described by Phil Rickman on the BBC Wales Arts Blog as 'almost legendary.' Here are all the useful clips gathered in one web page. There aren't many. There should be more. For example, the 'Your Dad in Vegas' film is not available online. I have a
- [Mood Index Communique 1](https://ianmarchant.com/free-university-of-radnorshire/history-3/mood-index-communique-1/) - These pages are dedicated to the band I formed with my friend Peter French in Newhaven, East Sussex, in 1984. We were called The Mood Index Continuum, later MIC, and latterly The Mood Index. Our first gig was in 1984 at the old Richmond on London Road, Brighton, supporting Wild Willy Barratt. Our last gig
- [Radio Free Radnorshire](https://ianmarchant.com/free-university-of-radnorshire/) - My idea of fun is sitting about chatting and listening to music with friends. That's why I founded Radio Free Radnorshire in 2015. My mate Gary Houghrain did some logos, and I started using a site called Spreaker to do some music shows - a few of them are still to be found here -
- [The Pancester Plough Monday Mummer's Play](https://ianmarchant.com/the-pancester-plough-monday-mummers-play/) - Appendix Four: The Pancester Plough Monday Mummers Play The text was collected by Dadd from Mr. Geo. Pither in 1902. It was a traditional Plough Monday play, latterly performed by youths. It is unusual in several respects; firstly, in that the script does not cover the banter between the Doctor and Jack Finney, which appears
- [Jules Dicken, Mr. Moonshake](https://ianmarchant.com/jules-dicken-mr-moonshake/) - How did I meet Julian Dicken, my genius collaborator, you ask? Pretty much, as a child. He's the son of a couple of pals of mine from Lancaster, the musician Ian Dicken, and the photographer Pauline Clark. This is why I describe him as my 'nephew', and my favourite nephew at that; because it used
- [The Others](https://ianmarchant.com/the-others/) - Men and Models! The less well known follow up to Men and Sheds.
- [X meets Y. They fall in love. Due to circumstances beyond their control, they are parted.](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/x-meets-y-they-fall-in-love-due-to-circumstances-beyond-their-control-they-are-parted/) - Here’s an old story. Set, in this particular translation, in St. Petersburg. In the 1880’s, shall we say? X is married, happily up to a point, with two daughters he adores. He is comfortably situated, a writer with a tenured post at the University, and a dutiful and loving wife who keeps a warm and
- [Radio Free Radnorshire presents 'One Fine Day.'](https://ianmarchant.com/free-university-of-radnorshire/radio-free-radnorshire-presents-one-fine-day-2/) - Podcast will be here!
- [Radio Free Radnorshire presents 'One Fine Day'](https://ianmarchant.com/free-university-of-radnorshire/radio-free-radnorshire-presents-one-fine-day/) - Coming soon! The podcast!
- [A Hero For High Times](https://ianmarchant.com/a-hero-for-high-times/) - A Younger Reader’s Guide to the Beats, Hippies, Freaks, Punks, Ravers, New-Age Travellers and Dog-on-a-Rope Brew Crew Crusties of the British Isles, 1956–1994
- [History 3](https://ianmarchant.com/free-university-of-radnorshire/history-3/) - These pages are devoted to my band The Mood Index, or MIC, or The Mood Index Continuum. We formed in 1984, and we last played a gig in 2008. It's taken me ages to find a medium which would enable me to play a few tracks and tell our story. And then I remembered 'The
- [Bibliography and References](https://ianmarchant.com/a-hero-for-high-times/bibliography-and-references/) - This is the Hero for High Times bibliography - thank you for your interest. Abrahams, Ian, and Wishart, Bridget: Festivalized (2015, Gonzo Multimedia) Akhter, Miriam and Humphries, Steve: Far Out – the Dawning of New Age Britain (1999, Sansom) Albertine, Viv: Clothes Music Boys (2014, Faber and Faber) Allen, Tony: Attitude (2002, Gothic Image) Aubrey,
- [Cookie Policy](https://ianmarchant.com/cookie-policy/) - This site uses cookies - small text files that are placed on your machine to help the site provide a better user experience. In general, cookies are used to retain user preferences, store information for things like shopping carts, and provide anonymised tracking data to third party applications like Google Analytics. As a rule, cookies
- [Curious Survivals of Pancester](https://ianmarchant.com/curious-survivals-of-pancester/) - A selection of entries from ‘The Antiquarian Customs and Curious Survivals of Pancester’, by The Reverend Clement Dadd, pub. John Murray, 1907. The Alarum and the Carillon At nine every evening, the carillon in the church tower sounds the Curfew over the sleepy honey coloured city; and at six every morning the red frock coated
- [Heroic Reviews: What the Papers Say](https://ianmarchant.com/heroic-reviews-what-the-papers-say/)
- [A Hero For High Times: Appendix](https://ianmarchant.com/new-links-page-test/)
- [Heroic Links](https://ianmarchant.com/a-hero-for-high-times/heroic-links/) - I so hope these links keep working. They are the ones I promise in the Appendix of the book. This first one is this look at the archaeology and history of the Walton Basin. http://www.rgreen.org.uk/Radnor.html Here is the Procol Harum story, in three episodes http://www.procolharum.com/young_cat-claude1.htm http://www.procolharum.com/young_cat-claude++2+.htm http://www.procolharum.com/young_cat-claude+33--s.htm Here are a few magazine archives - Click
- [Chesterton's Road Poems](https://ianmarchant.com/longest-crawl-ian-marchant/chestertons-road-poems/) - The three anarchist pissheads in Chesterton’s strange novel ‘The Flying Inn’ are on the run from the forces of government repression. To amuse the hunted men, their leader, ‘The Captain’, Patrick Dalroy, insists to his companions, the poet and MP Dorian Wimpole, and the landlord of The Old Ship, Humphrey Pump, that they each write
- [Unedited Chapter Seven.](https://ianmarchant.com/a-hero-for-high-times/unedited-chapter-seven/) - When I finished writing this chapter of 'A Hero For High Times', I knew I was in trouble, because it came to just over 30 000 words. And it was just one chapter. So this meant the book was going to be about twice as long as I'd originally told my editor it was going
- [Caves Crypts and Tunnels](https://ianmarchant.com/the-others/caves-crypts-and-tunnels/) - This was the first book that I’d done for children, (published April 2002) and I was commissioned to do it by my old editor at Orion, Christine Kidney. Christine left Orion to set up her own company, Watling Street, and she decided that her first six books were going to be a series of guidebooks
- [Flotsam and Jetsam](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/flotsam-and-jetsam/) - By Ian Marchant and Rachel Francis CHARACTERS DAVE: a man in young middle age CAROL: his wife, a little younger EILEEN: a woman in her mid-seventies GEORGE: her husband, a little older SCAMPI: a hippy in his late fifties RUTH: a woman in her mid-thirties FRED: a seventeen year old youth AIMEE: a fifteen year
- [Introduction](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/introduction/) - My creative writing tutor at Lancaster University gave me three great pieces of advice. These were, writers write, writers read, and don't bother writing short stories, because you'll never get them published. And mostly I've taken her advice these last twenty years; but, inevitably, I have cracked now and again, especially in my early years
- [In Southern Waters](https://ianmarchant.com/in-southern-waters-ian-marchant/) - I wrote In Southern Waters in the corner of my tiny living room in Perth Street, Lancaster. I shared the house with my eldest daughter, and my youngest daughter often came to stay with us, so I wrote it mostly at night when the kids were in bed. When I first stared pootling around with
- [Katinka's Feast](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/katinkas-feast/) - Once upon a time, in the far north of London, lived a married couple called Mungo and Katinka Needham. They were by no means rich - Katinka was an assistant producer at The Shopping Channel, and Mungo a community worker in Islington - so they were forced to live in a street which the Evening
- [An Incomer's Christmas in Wales](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/an-incomers-christmas-in-wales/) - We'd always talked about moving into the country. It would be great for the girls, for one thing. They would grow up surrounded by beauty and peace and their childhood would become a fondly remembered idyll of bucolic delight. And there were advantages for my wife and I. She would finally get that garden she'd
- [Love It](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/love-it/) - Freedom is an illusion, but a three piece suite is forever. I know that now, now that I’ve been split up from Helen, what, five years or so? But when we first split up, I was happy to swap furniture for freedom. Well, and the house and the dog and the rest. She could have
- [Joy's Prayer](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/joys-prayer-ian-marchant/) - (Joy is cleaning a church. As she polishes her way along the pews, she sings hymns and prays aloud.) ...I will not cease from mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand ‘Til we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land... (She stops polishing) Dear Lord. This is my church, as
- [A Period Home](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/a-period-home/) - One hundred days after the cataclysmic sea-change in British political life which saw Mr. Blair into office, and Jonathan Matthews was still in a state of almost vegetative shock. He had allowed his name to go forward to please Helen, as much as anything, and when he was chosen by the constituency as an archetypal
- [Something Of The Night](https://ianmarchant.com/something-of-the-night-ian-marchant/) - I got the idea for a book about the night in 2008, and envisaged taking a similar approach to the one I took in Parallel Lines and The Longest Crawl. This is to say, I’d travel and I’d do a huge amount of reading around the history of my subject before I started writing. The
- [Parallel Lines](https://ianmarchant.com/parallel-lines-ian-marchant/) - During the 18 or so months that it took me to write and research Parallel Lines, I would on occasion go to parties. Sometimes at these parties I would meet girls. ‘What do you do?’, they would say. ‘I’m a writer’, I would reply, puffing sagely on my trusty old pipe. Their pretty eyes would
- [The Longest Crawl](https://ianmarchant.com/longest-crawl-ian-marchant/) - Writers in Pubs or A Pub of One’s Own: I was sitting in the back room of The Oxford Bar, in Edinburgh, drinking 80 Shilling, and the guy sitting opposite me was Ian Rankin, right enough, but I couldn’t help feeling that at any moment Inspector Rebus would come through, and might take offence at
- [Dole Acre](https://ianmarchant.com/dole-acre-ian-marchant/) - The Battle For Dole Acre: An Introduction The day I finished In Southern Waters in 1995, my heart, long shot through with fault lines, finally cracked and broke. I lost my sanity for about three years. I thought it would never come back. In those three years, I wrote 25 000 words of a highly
- [The Coolest Guy I Know](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/the-coolest-guy-i-know-ian-marchant/) - Traveling west on the Tube with Steve and Marie after rehearsal one evening recently, I was visited by a sudden and painful erection, caused by the realisation that I still fancied Marie, even though we had split up over a year ago. I was a bit pissed at first when she went off with the
- [Stuff For Writers](https://ianmarchant.com/shop/stuff-for-writers/) - Amazon.co.uk Widgets
- [Bookstore](https://ianmarchant.com/shop/bookstore/) - Amazon.co.uk Widgets Amazon.co.uk Widgets Amazon.co.uk Widgets Amazon.co.uk Widgets
- [Primary Device](https://ianmarchant.com/free-university-of-radnorshire/history-3/primary-device/) - I first met Peter French to speak to at Chris Page's flat on the Brighton Road in Newhaven in late 1983. Peter was sixteen, and I was twenty-five. Almost certainly, we were gathered there to buy spliff. Pete was trying to dread his naturally curly hair, and it wasn't quite taking. I was wearing blue-framed
- [The Train Now Standing](https://ianmarchant.com/parallel-lines-ian-marchant/the-train-now-standing/) - "Hello." A girl was talking to me, a pretty black girl. She's twenty, maybe a year or two younger. "Hello," she said again. I was trying to look at St. Pancras Station, from opposite on the Euston Road, by Camden Town Hall, and I was embarrassed to be caught by girls, my first day as
- [Miss Hartley's Beer Recipe](https://ianmarchant.com/longest-crawl-ian-marchant/miss-hartleys-beer-recipe/) - If you are unfamiliar with Miss Hartley’s books, and you like reading about the grain and texture of English life, then you can do no better than to track her down. ‘Water in England’ is an astounding volume. When I was nobbut a child I used to take it out of Newhaven library for week
- [Stories, Monologues and a Radio Play](https://ianmarchant.com/stories/) - My first creative writing tutor gave me three great pieces of advice. These were, writers write, writers read, and don't bother writing short stories, because you'll never get them published. And mostly I've taken her advice these last twenty years; but, inevitably, I have cracked now and again, especially in my early years as a
- [Shop](https://ianmarchant.com/shop/)

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- [Psycho geography](https://ianmarchant.com/category/psycho-geography/)
- [Pub quiz](https://ianmarchant.com/category/pub-quiz/)
- [Radio](https://ianmarchant.com/category/radio/)
- [Radnorshire](https://ianmarchant.com/category/radnorshire/)
- [Railways](https://ianmarchant.com/category/railways/)
- [Spume](https://ianmarchant.com/category/spume/)
- [Telly](https://ianmarchant.com/category/telly/)
- [Traditions](https://ianmarchant.com/category/traditions/)
- [Travellers](https://ianmarchant.com/category/travellers/)
- [University](https://ianmarchant.com/category/university/)
- [Writing](https://ianmarchant.com/category/writing/)
- [Your Dad](https://ianmarchant.com/category/your-dad/)
- [Hypochondria](https://ianmarchant.com/category/hypochondria/)
- [Web](https://ianmarchant.com/category/web/)
- [Disestablishment](https://ianmarchant.com/category/disestablishment/)
- [Wales](https://ianmarchant.com/category/wales/)
- [Fiction](https://ianmarchant.com/category/fiction/)
- [Antiquarian](https://ianmarchant.com/category/antiquarian/)
- [Sussex](https://ianmarchant.com/category/sussex/)
- [Church in Wales](https://ianmarchant.com/category/church-in-wales/)
- [Church of England](https://ianmarchant.com/category/church-of-england/)
- [Lancaster](https://ianmarchant.com/category/lancaster/)
- [Cancer](https://ianmarchant.com/category/cancer/)
- [Prostate](https://ianmarchant.com/category/prostate/)
- [The Road to Wembley](https://ianmarchant.com/category/the-road-to-wembley/)

## Tags

- [Greens](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/greens/)
- [Green Party](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/green-party/)
- [Marchant](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/marchant/)
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- [A44](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/a44/)
- [Antiquarian](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/antiquarian/)
- [Welsh language](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/welsh-language/)
- [riddle](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/riddle/)
- [Brecon](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/brecon/)
- [Radnorshire](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/radnorshire/)
- [By-Election](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/by-election/)
- [Chis Davies](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/chis-davies/)
- [Radio Free Radnorhire](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/radio-free-radnorhire/)
- [Prostate](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/prostate/)
- [Music](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/music/)
- [Streaming](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/streaming/)
- [Politics](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/politics/)
- [Cancer](https://ianmarchant.com/tag/cancer/)