Wildlife

It turns out it takes a long time to get to Guadalajara . Even for those who do know ‘the way to San José ?’. I’m not sure if it is my longest journey but it is definitely Top 3. On the way out, after sitting cosy in Hay Castle with mulled wine, we fight through the rain and dark to the car and Richard drives us to Heathrow for our late Sunday overnight flight. On the way through security my bag is searched as it is always searched at airports. I look really dodgy apparently, or I should stop making quips about drug smuggling on blogs, but otherwise we pass through without hitch, luck out with three seats to the two of us, and, after discovering there’s nothing we can eat on the long plane journey as our special meals (dietary requirement divas that we are) weren’t booked we instead opt to sleep until a view appears. We sleep a lot.  It’s a 12.5 hour journey to Mexico City. There we stand in queues in the terminus for two hours before boarding to fly the 1.5 hour flight to...

'There's an opportunity to go to Mexico in a week or two. Do you fancy going?'  I look at Richard, blink twice, and say something eloquent and profound. I say something like '––What––?'  Outside the Dylan Thomas Centre, a grey Welsh November was getting itself into a bit of an Abertawe flap with the obese circling gulls. Inside the official book launch and signing for Rebecca F. John's debut collection Clown's Shoes  has begun to wind down. Richard and I are enjoying a glass of wine with Jeremy Osborne from Sweet Talk productions who had produced Rebecca's stories for both Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4Extra. It is hard to conjure up the heat and colour of Mexico, to comprehend his question.  Richard explains that two of the authors we work with, Rebecca F. John and John Harrison , have been invited by the British Council and British Council Wales to attend the international book fair FIL Guadalajara in Mexico's second city later that month....

REVIEW: THE GOOD SON, PAUL MCVEIGH SUSIE WILD REVIEWS 0 COMMENTS 25 SHARES Facebook Twitter Newsletter ROLL UP, ROLL UP Susie Wild reviews Paul McVeigh’s debut novel The Good Son (Salt Publishing 2015)  I was born the day the Troubles started. ‘Wasn’t I, Ma? says me. ‘It was you that started them, son,’ says she, and we all laugh, except Our Paddy. I put that down to his pimples and general ugliness. It must be hard to be happy with a face like that. Roll up, Roll up for the Mickey Donnelly show — a vivid, playful, fence-hurdling, page-turning act of cocky bravado and endearing imagination. Mickey is a shining star of a protagonist; charming, erudite, and warmly, infectiously funny. He breathes fresh air into the much raked over subject of Ireland’s Troubles. Still, those that live in Mickey’s square mile in 1980s Ardoyne are often immune to his charms, calling him ‘a gabshite’, ‘wee maggot’, ‘gay’. Scundering him in broad daylight. Scundering him...

Gifts Indeed. I've reviewed Trevor Fishlock's new book A Gift of Sunlight: The fortune and quest of the Davies sisters of Llandinam (Gomer, 2015) for issue 55 of The Welsh Agenda .