Welcome to The Growlery and its rumblings, which are mainly for the author’s benefit but hopefully the reader will enjoy too.

Some of you may be asking what is a growlery?  If you are a fan of Charles Dickens (like me) you’ll know, but for those still waiting to discover the delights of Dickens, a growlery is the Victorian version of the man-cave, as referred to by Mr Jarndyce, in Bleak House:

 ‘This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.’

Mr Jarndyce went to his growlery when he was ” deceived or disappointed in — the wind, and it’s Easterly, I take refuge here.”  My growlery is both an escape and a working site – there is a place in real life (aka garden shed) where I go to write, but I also need to write regularly, hence the online space.  My growlery is therefore my writing gym, for exercising the grey cells, whatever humour I am in. Thankfully I won’t be wearing Lycra or straining any muscles, but I will be aiming to be creative, hopefully entertaining and informative, and, above all, writing.

I intend to share my thoughts on life and all things literary, with a few book reviews, comments on literary events and maybe even some of my writing (if I say writing often enough it might actually happen!).