A quick story to hopefully cheer up those suffering, like me, from the Christmas/holiday blues. If you like this story, there's more available under 'Dean Scurlock' at Amazon e-book kindle store.

John Macilroy and the Dog That Came In From the Cold

(Or ‘Tinkerer, Time-Traveller, Solderer, Berk’)

At 31 years, John Macilroy was a constant nuisance to his Nana…

H'evening m'dears,

This is nothing more than a shameless plug to promote my work and ask you to spend your hard earned money buying it. Yes, you could put five pounds on the electricity meter and warm and light the abode for a day or two, or few quid to get the gas fire and cooker a'workin'.

However, spare a thought for me. I sit here, writing stories and plays for your entertainment and my only wish is to see you out there buy this work and laugh your collective bottoms…

Recommended Play of the Week: So Far, So Good – Rowena Moreno (amazon e-book out now)

Recommended Book of the Week: Metamorphosis and other stories – Franz Kafka (bizarre)

Recommended Film of the Week: A Good Year – Ridley Scott (with a bottle of wine handy)

Recommended TV of the Week: The Killing III (gotta love those jumpers)

Recommended ‘Animal to talk about’ of the week – The Blue Footed Boobie

Recommended ‘Twitterer to follow’ of the week -  Jewish…

I am currently speed writing as I am about to be thrown out, not literally, of my local library computer room as there is a computer class starting here in the next ten minutes.

But I shall not complain. Most libraries were set up by subscriptions of ordinary working men and women who wanted a public educational resourse for the whole community. Can't afford a book, play etc? go to the library. Want that library shut down and replaced by a coffee shop or car park? Vote…

You sit. You open the A4 refill pad you just bought especially from ‘notepads anonymous’, knowing you've got cupboards bursting with notepads of various sizes. You stare at the blank page. You look around at the people chatting away about grandsons, leggings, vim and pneumonia and you look back at the page. Stretch the arms behind the head. Shake the writing hand pretentiously as if you’re about to write Wales’ answer to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Nothing. You sit. You stare.

A word,…

Check out the work of new writers tonight at the Forge event at Chapter Arts Centre. My wife's play is there tonight so I'm a bit biased in my advertising but I'm sure all of the pieces will be truly inspiring, entertaining and worth watching.

And for £3! Come on! That's cheaper than paying to dodge teenage popcorn at a Skyfall outing, surely?

So forget Bond, Madagascar and the rest. Make Cardiff a theatre going city once again. See you tonight.  

For any fans of the short play 'Squirrel pride', performed at The Crofts pub in October for Stories of the Streets, the ebook of it is available at amazon kindle store from Sunday at the latest for £1.99

One of the greatest achievements of the ruling class could be said to be their ability to make the working class ashamed of itself. MTV’s shameful ‘The Valley’s’ has young people representing the worst stereotypes of the working class that our so called ‘betters’ can throw at us. Violent. Alcoholic or border line. Drug taking. Fake tanning. and on and on and on.

Another perpetrator is Channel 4’s Shameless and I leave readers of this message to comment further on that dribble…

Recommended Play: The Resistable Rise of Arturio Uri – Dario Fo (apologies for misspellings)

Recommended Novel: Much Obliged, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse

The following views are my own and I welcome constructive debate.

In 2001 I went to see a play at Chapter Arts Centre in Canton, Cardiff called ‘Franco’s Bastard’ and I’d be grateful if someone could remind me of the author’s name. This told the story of a Wales Free Army leader so deranged with visions of…

Squirrel Pride, directed, produced and performed better than I could have imagined by members of National Theatre Wales at the Crofts Pub on the 16th October 2012, will be part of a new collection of my short plays available for the start off price of 99p, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, from Saturday 20th October. Search Amazon for Squirrel Pride Scurlock to find it.

If you don't have a ridiculously expensive kindle or e-reader device (I haven't) then there is a FREE…

Free Men

 by

Dean Scurlock

Setting: Broken gates of concentration camp. Russian soldier greets small group of male prisoners.

Russian: I liberate you...!

Man: Liberate yourself!

Russian: Sorry?

Man: Sorry? Good. That is a word we expect to hear a lot of in the days to come.

Russian: I...I liberate...

Man: We are free men. You cannot liberate us.

Russian: But you are prisoners.

Man: A house may…

Recommended Book: Pigs Have Wings by P.G. Wodehouse

Recommended Play: Naked by Mike Leigh

Having reached my mid-late thirties and pleased that I have so far avoided the vain temptations of the five shades of brown offered by Just4Men, my deluded belief that I am merely in my late youth pushes me to make some comments on the past few decades of existence that you are free to ignore, disagree with, and/or comment on:

1. Fair weather friends: whether it is at…

Squirrel Pride

By

Dean Scurlock

Setting: A park in Wales – two squirrels, Jeff and Sally, are busy collecting nuts for the winter but Jeff decides to divert them both from the task in hand. The action resembles some of the British soap operas of which most of us are justly ashamed.

Jeff: Right, that’s me done for the day and no mistake.

Sally: But you’ve only collected a few dozen…

Ah, 'The Valleys'! An in-depth commentary on the everyday lives of...wait a minute. Scrub that. Ah yes, I know. A travesty of right-wing reality post-modernism where ordinary people are to be portrayed as inbred, feckless idiots whilst being held up as an example of everyone else in their ethnic, geographic, or class category.

'The Valleys'  - a good indication of valleys people and daily lives? Yes, if you also believe that The Sun newspaper is a champion of feminism and The Daily…

 Here's the 1st chapter. Please buy the rest for 77p by typing 'Dawn Dave Scurlock' into amazon.co.uk. The 100th buyer will recieve a free copy of The Chronicles of Macilroy

Dawn of the Dave

December 23^rd

Preface

‘Come on!’ I shouted, pointlessly it seemed, at the relatively new Digital Radio Sally had bought me for my birthday. It was being…

(Dawn of the Dave – ebook on Amazon, now only 77p!)

My generation were called…

At the end of septemberThe Paget Rooms in Penarth are putting on ‘The 39 Steps’ based on the West End comedy re-invention where only 4 actors play up to 150 characters. I’ve wanted to go and see this in London for the past two years but thanks to privatised rail fares, extortionate hotel prices and £50 a pop for tickets to the show, I’ve sort of held off a little up to now.

This might be an interesting show for any of you that want to extend your acting range and want to see how…

Let’s take an often tried concept, the Zombie movie. I am not an expert on the zombie movie but I’ve seen enough, like most people, to form an opinion good or bad. When one mentions zombie movies one of the first films to jump to mind for the British Audience is Shaun of the Dead, a satire of American George Romero films that the stars and makers of Shaun are fans of.

Of the many funny parts of this film, the one comment that stands out is the place of safety chosen by the unlikely…