I went into town today to visit Selectadisc for the last time, but the store had already closed down, as Sue found when she took the photos on the left on her way to work this morning. I’ve been shopping at the store for 33 years. When I arrived in Nottingham it was on Goldsmith St, where the Royal Concert Hall is now. I used to flog them my spare review copies from the university paper. I spent a lot of time in the singles and second hand store on Bridlesmith Gate and latterly in the three stores on Market St, which shrank to two, then one when Jim bought the shop from its founder, Brian, a little while back. Selectadisc was a legendary, eclectic,…

Just back from the terrific American Scene touring exhibition at Nottingham University’s Djanogly Art Gallery, where I fell in love with the screenprint on my left, Counterpoint by Edward Landon, from 1942. If anyone knows where I can buy a decent reproduction, please let me know. I know I could fork out for the catalogue and I probably will, but I’d like it on a wall and would prefer to have it in the original size. It’s a British Museum touring exhibition, subtitled From Hopper To Pollock and it runs until the 19th of April. The range of work featured is broad and rather brilliant. You can, for instance, trace Jackson Pollock’s work as it moves from figurative to abstract expressionism. There’s an accompanying lecture…

Today I’m publishing a new story, In A Hot Place, on this website. You can download it here. The story is also published in a new book aimed at teenagers and in today’s Morning Star. ‘In A Hot Place’ is just 1500 words long and its inspiration is obvious. That said, the piece is not specifically about a particular secret prison, or one country’s involvement in illegal rendition. The narrator’s gender is open. It is pertinent to many stories in the news this week. I hope that, very soon, it will feel like a period piece. I wrote In ‘A Hot Place’ in December of last year. I owed the editor, who was in a hurry, and I didn’t have an idea. I opened the…

I’m reading with two debut novelists at Nottingham Waterstones on March 26th. I enjoyed Chris Killen’s The Bird Room over Christmas (see below). It’s a wry, witty novel about sex and ennui which has deservedly been attracting a lot of attention. Chris was one of my dissertation students when I first began teaching Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent in 2002. That makes me feel a little old. Mind you, I’ll also be talking about a debut novel – my first for adults, The Pretender, a literary thriller – that I began writing when I was Chris’s age. Reading from and talking about her first novel will be Brigid Rose, whose The City Of Lists is published on March 5th. I’ve just finished reading this absorbing…

A short while ago I heard that John Martyn had died, first via Twitter, which must be a sign of the times, then in mobile call from my brother, Paul. I doubt John knew what Twitter was, or had much time for the web. My first thought was, ‘how sad’, the second: I’m amazed he lasted so long, given his ill health and the vast quantities of drugs and booze he consumed. The first time I met him, in 1976, he blasely snorted a line of smack in front of me and the other people in the dressing room. The last time, just before he started doing those ‘heritage album’ tours, he was in a bad way and a lot of the fire seemed to…