Beers I Enjoyed In May 2026 X13 Beer Clip - Dave Day Beer Brew York – Marice The Otter 3.9% ***** Don’t know if they just mis-spelt Maurice or not but a great beer, roasted finish feel to a traditional bitter, with toffee, caramel and toast add ins. Toffee and caramel I could taste but no sense of toast. Given that the ingredients of bread and beer are the same (yeast) not sure how toast is added or at what stage of brewing. Are toast crumbs sprinkled in? How well or lightly

Me in performance - Photo by Andy N. The vast majority of creatives, and their potential publishers, promoters, agents, and public performance or promotion supporters are fantastic people to meet and interact with. Occasionally, I meet or collide with dreadful ones though, where egotism, Narcissism, laziness or discrimination can cause all manner of problems. Bad Writer Practice Talking a great deal about work in progress which rarely exists in any form, coming up with ideas

Book Cover for the Twelfth BHF Book Of Horror Stories Edited by Andrew Llewellyn and Ian Talbot Taylor. 2026 BHF Books. All proceeds to Once Upon A Smile. Spoiler alerts Not an unbiased review as the collection includes my short story, Fresh Dead Flesh, about ghouls feeding on the dead on an English Civil War battlefield, driven to urgent measures as the fighting seems to be drawing to a close. My story is superbly illustrated by Smuzz, and most stories included have great ac

1966. Gollancz Science Fiction Masterworks & other editions. Spoiler Alerts Book Cover - Daniel Keyes - Flowers For Algernon The Vinyl Tap’s wonderful book club has books chosen randomly from suggestions offered by its members. This month, the book picked was one I selected, having read it some years back, and I was confident that it would be well received. The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood once upset her readership by denying that her dystopian novel was ‘science fi

Diary Monday June 1st 2026 Pub Sign - Vinyl Tap Bad start to the day with a very leaky stoma, and mild vomiting. Just had a few slices of toast which I coped with OK. I had multiple parcel deliveries, mainly new shower equipment, as my old shower curtain and shower head unit were worn out. Tesco food delivery later on in the day. My 2026 diary/day planner Diary Tuesday June 2nd 2026 Felt much better health wise today. More Amazon deliveries, mostly a new duvet and covers for

One of my smiley Stoma Bags She insisted on swimming in the sea With her stoma bag visible for all to see sticking up over her bikini briefs On her visit to the Coral reefs Friends supported her brave display Other beach users looked away Mumbling disapproval and disgust Pointed, stared, moaned and fussed Whispering so she wouldn’t hear them speak Aloud their worries that her bag might leak She walked down to the water and started to wade Ignoring the protests, with her bag d

Daniel Defoe - The Further Adventures Of Robinson Crusoe - Rushed out in months to cash in on the success of a genuinely great book, the sequel has Crusoe sailing round the World converting 'savages' to Christianity. Friday is killed within a few chapters and Crusoe is completely indifferent. Some of my book shelves Stephen R Donaldson - The 7th Decimate - Tolkienesque twaddle. In a realm where wizards control six decimating powers, fire, Earthquakes, water, etc, one side o

Film Screening Event - a very short, even abrupt film made by students at the University Of Lancashire. The cast, crew and many of their friends came along to support the screening, making this one of the liveliest events to date. The Vinyl Tap Pub Sign, Ashton, Preston Copied from my online diary for this period. https://arthurpeterchappell.wixsite.com/homepage/post/diary-saturday-23rd-to-sunday-31st-may-2026 The film tells of the formation of a rock band after a Gregory’s G

Me performing poetry at Manchester's Green Room - photo by Andy N Quiet starting week that got busier later. The opening weekend was spent not going out, but concentrating on my writings and such. Even the bank holiday passed quietly. As I don’t work for health reasons, the joy of a day off for bank holidays means less to me and it generally ends up meaning I get no post with services shutting for the day. Wednesday 27th, things picked up. I had to go for a special diabetes 2

Me Performing Poetry At The Green Room, Manchester. Photo by Andy N A rare serious poem, written after recently seeing a few friends who didn’t seem to want to talk to me with no explanation. Poem – Snubbed By Friends You used to be so kind But nowadays I find You barely give me a second glance. Under what circumstance Did we fall out? At least have the courtesy to tell me about Why I’m suddenly sent to Coventry. Is it you or really me? What on Earth did I do? Have I broken

Pubs Signs - Book by Arthur Chappell Amberley Press 2024. With about 12,000 pub sign photos collected since about 2012 when I first took up the hobby of chasing up images of Inn Signs, my storage and collection of them gets quite complicated. 3D Sign - Royalty (Been in). The Old Crown, Digbeth, Birmingham, West Midlands When I first started taking shots of them with digital cameras I stored the images on CD-ROMS, of which I have about 140, (they contain many images not relati

Question Mark, drawn and photographed by me A common sign in public offices, shop/store counters and on public transport reads something like: (the wording can vary) “Our staff have a zero tolerance policy to any kind of abuse and any customers being offensive, aggressive, threatening or intimidating to any of our staff will be asked to leave, or even face prosecution.” Great at face value. No one wants some drunken oaf spouting racist, sexist slurs or threatening public serv

On Weds 27th May 2026, after two months and having to send them a reminder, I finally received a reply to my complaint regarding three separate incidents involving Royal Preston Hospital’s consultant Mr Khan. The reply is very dismissive of my concerns and allegations and puts me personally in a very negative light, accusing me of being abusive and insinuating (without the slightest shred of direct accusation) of racism as if that somehow motivated my disagreements with Mr Kh

The squabbles over transgender rights regarding which toilets to use in bars and restaurants and other public places frankly baffles me. It's a fight I struggle to get my head around. The bigots object while the transgender toilet user is queuing. Once doing what needs doing they, like other users are in the cubicles, presumably with a locked door. It's the gents loos where most toilet unit space is taken up with messy unsanitary urinals, and the users see what each other are

I have had a flourish of successfully released writings this month. BHF 12 Book Cover (art by John Toner) My English Civil War set horror story, Fresh Dead Flesh appears in the 12th BHF Book Of Horror Stories - Dying, Dead, Undead. Money from sales of the BHF books go to charity. The book is available through Amazon. I have work in volumes 9, 10 and 11 too. My stories in each are illustrated by Smuzz. The book's cover art by Paul Mudie, depicting a zombified Nigel Farrage

2002 Macmillan Press. Spoiler alerts Read as a selection of The Beer & Books club, Vinyl Tap, Ashton, Preston, Lancashire for Thursday 14th May 2026. Book - Across The Nightingale Floor Spoiler Alerts Across The Nightingale Floor is the first of a series of (currently) five novels – (possibly seven if you include the splinter works on the ‘Children Of Otori’ as well). The novel is set in a fictional version of Japan at the height of an era when small but powerful principaliti

Book Cover For Connie Willis's Crosstalk. Spoilers A rare misfire from one of my favorite authors. Crosstalk is a long novel with a totally unconvincing theme and mostly awful characters. It centres on Briddey, a hopeless romantic working for a dubious communication tech company and surrounded by peer group pressure obsessed family and friends. She is somehow persuaded into having a new medical dating chip installed right into her brain. The chip will tell her if her chosen p

Bank Top Flat Cap Beer Clip Beers Enjoyed In February 2026 x9 Due to a health crisis, with my stoma being strangulated by the hernia it generated, (including a week long hospital stay and narrowly avoided surgery), I found alcohol was bloating my stomach and making me ill so I went teetotal for the latter half of March and the first three weeks of April, returning to beer consumption at the end of April. This reduced the numbder of ales I was able to sample and review for th

Bard For Life CD (Includes a 2001 recording of me performing On Behalf Of Our Client) On a recent cinema visit, I saw a trailer for a pending new movie, Coyote VS ACME, with the premise that Wile E Coyote of the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes ‘Road-Runner’ cartoons sues the ACME Trading Corporation for damages for the number of times their devises injured and almost killed him. The film is due for release in 2026. Astonishingly, it has virtually the same plot as a poem I wrote,

Film Night – Vinyl Tap, Preston. The Vinyl Tap pub sign, Ashton, Preston, Lancashire. The pub I visit most frequently hosts a monthly short film night, centred on films with some local interest to the city of Preston. On Thursday 23rd April, they screened an excellent trio of films related to the writings of Michael Marshall Smith, author of The Straw Men and TV film, Cruise Of The Gods. https://letterboxd.com/arthurchappell/film/cruise-of-the-gods/ The film, The Island w