Hi, I’m Alan, and I’m a teacher and writer. I’m a baby boomer from the UK, but I’ve spent most of the last thirty years abroad, in Indonesia, South Korea, Malta, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, and Portugal. I still do some online teaching to top up my UK state pension, but apart from that I am free to waste my time, which is one of the few things I excel at. I am now living on Gozo, which is the smaller island to the west of the main island of Malta, in the middle of the Mediterranean. Some guys get all the luck.

I’ve written throughout my life, including three novels and some playscripts which were performed on the fringe of the Fringe, and suddenly I found myself writing poems again at the ripe old age of 70 after a gap of around thirty years. I guess I had grown old and cranky, and I had forgotten how much pleasure I got from writing, especially poetry. My first novel was published by a ‘traditional’ publisher while my other two used a self-publishing company, and my latest book, Digging for Water, consists of 128 poems I wrote in 2023/4, plus eight short stories and eleven essays on Art written during the same time period.

Culturally, I’m afraid I’m a bit of a dinosaur. I love classic film noir from the 40s and 50s, Universal horror movies from the 30s, and dubious 50s sci-fi, but know almost nothing about contemporary movies. Musically, my tastes are fairly wide-ranging, but also generally trapped in the past, including jazz, 60s pop, soul, blues, rock, psychedelia, Beefheart and Zappa, Nico and the Velvet Underground, and ska. I’m also a big fan of 70s krautrock. I listen to a lot of ‘world music’ (although I doubt if the category really has much meaning since it lumps together so many different types of music from so many different cultures). Although I have no ability whatsoever at painting, I love art and feel jealous of people who can create pictures from nothing except their hands and brains and their skill with oils or water colours. I also feel jealous of people who can dance or sing or have the dedication to master a musical instrument. If I have any artistic talent at all, it is only for words.

I don’t read much fiction, even though I write it. My academic background lies in theatre history, but I’m a bit of a butterfly and flitter from one arts or humanities or social science area to another. I’m especially drawn towards philosophy; its uselessness appeals deeply to me for some reason. I’ve spent a lot of the last few years trying to fill in some of the enormous gaps in my knowledge of science but the gaps haven’t significantly shrunk. I just don’t seem to have the kind of brain that can cope with it.

It has cost me a lot of sweating and swearing to get this far as I’ve struggled to conquer WordPress because I’m definitely not a digital native, and frankly IT and related stuff bores me. If I need to learn how to use a program in order to do something, I will, but otherwise I find it tedious. The social and metaphysical impacts of modern technology fascinate me, but not how to make an Excel spreadsheet. Anyway, I’ve finally stopped sweating and swearing and cursing WordPress, and here is my website in all its amateur glory.

Welcome to Digging for Water.