Inland Beach Hut

If Les Dawson s mum had gone to Prague for a weekend and got hooked up with local scribe Franz Kafka then David Birtwistle could well have been the result. He s got Les s comic talent, perfect command of the Lancs demotic and his tendency to elaborate wordplay. Kafka s genetic contribution is a surreal take on the foreboding aspects of the modern world. Dave s Inland Beach Hut seems to yearn for a Waldenesque paradise while his A Certain Feel for Words is pure Les as he might recite before settling down at the piano for a rendering of the Moonlight Sonata. The Beeches leaves the primitive nirvana of what might be some Pennine retreat and plonks us down in a mad old peoples home full of escapees from a lunatic asylum. Most of these stories appeared in the Crazy Oik between 2009 and today (2018)