F Words by Sue Fenton

Imagine eight acoustic guitarists, a bazouki player and a girl on a glockenspiel, all simultaneously doing their thing in the corner of a small-town pub, doing a cover of a Turin Brakes song, when a fire breaks out on the table. Imagine you weren’t even there at the time – you’d wandered back in from … Continue reading »

One of my male acquaintances was keen to comment on my recent blog about the sexist songs I’d been writing http://fwords.co.uk/2012/01/25/my-unfortunate-reputation-for-writing-sexist-songs-leads-to-a-commission-from-a-disgruntled-friend/ Tony the Modern Folk Poet (aka Joseph Kilhane) has heard my little ditties at the pub music night so he has an interest anyway, and he seemed particularly to have taken exception to the … Continue reading »

I’ve always liked the concept of co-operatives, the idea of ordinary people joining together and sharing the labour and the profits of their labour, as opposed to fat-cat directors skimming off the cream and leaving a few drops of sour milk for the people who make their wealth possible, in the form of pathetic little … Continue reading »

My little group of chums at the local pub music night have the idea firmly fixed in their heads that I’m a writer of sexist songs. When a bunch of musical types get together, they often ask each other “what’s your genre?” and the answer might be Folk, R&B or Skiffle – or in extreme … Continue reading »

After nominating 12 other bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Awards yesterday, I ran out of steam and had to go and make my dinner, so I deferred the remaining three of the 15 I was supposed to nominate. Here they are now. http://kitchenslattern.com Kitchen Slattern writes about cookery and domesticity, and believes that doing the housework … Continue reading »

Crikey, I’ve been nominated for a Versatile Blogger Award. I can’t remember the last time I was nominated for anything, other than to go to the bar ‘cause it was my round. The awards seem to be fairly informal – it’s not like the Oscars or the X Factor or anything. There is no official … Continue reading »

I shouldn’t be so astonished that a pub full of people can write and perform 10 songs in under two hours – because I know, having been part of the process before, that it can be done. But even so, I was impressed by the speed with which a creative product can be assembled, given … Continue reading »

I’ve been in some kind of journalism ever since I sat at a manual typewriter in a college classroom in Cardiff reading about libel law, learning shorthand and writing news stories about made-up events in a made-up place called Newtown that suffered from far more of its fair share of fires, murders and motorway pile-ups. … Continue reading »

I learned three new words or phrases this week, simply from lurking about in a discussion on LinkedIn. One member (British) laughingly suggested that an Americanism employed by another member (American) was peculiar to the “13 Colonies”. The American took exception to this, saying the phrase was “fracked”; and the Brit responded he hadn’t meant … Continue reading »

Someone called “Mandy” left a very flattering comment on my blog the other day. “I was just seeking this information for a while,” remarked Mandy. “After 6 hours of continuous Googleing [sic], at last I got it in your website.” Glad to oblige, Mandy! “I wonder what’s the Google’s problem [sic] that does not rank … Continue reading »

A pair of daddy long-legs chose the wall above my bed on which to mate the other night. They started, appropriately, at bedtime, and were still at it in the morning. And they showed not the slightest embarrassment about me watching them and taking dirty pictures to post on the internet. Luckily for me, crane … Continue reading »

Felt initial delight on checking site stats, at seeing a relatively enormous number of comments had been posted. Most turned out to be spam, which was mildly disappointing, though funnily enough I actually rather enjoyed reading them. Is it compulsory, I wondered, for spam to be written so badly? Why would someone who is trying … Continue reading »