'This important, disturbing and frequently heartbreaking book should be read by every politician in Westminster.' Adrian Tempany, Observer 'In a few weeks' time, it would be thirty-five years to the day since those men and women had walked 340 miles to try to save their communities and their culture, and thirty-five years since I had turned down Pete's invitation to join them. I called work and booked some time off. Then I bought a one-way train ticket to Liverpool.' In 1981, Mike Carter's dad, Pete, organised the People's March for Jobs, which saw 300 people walk from Liverpool to London to protest as the Thatcher government's policies devastated industrial Britain and sent unemployment skyrocketing. Just before the 2016 EU referendum, Mike set off to walk the same route in a quest to better understand his dad and his country. As he walked, Mike found many echoes of the early eighties: a working class overlooked and ignored by Westminster politicans; communities hollowed out but fiercely resistant; anger and despair co-existing with hope and determination for change. And he also found that he and Pete shared more in common than he might have thought. All Together Now? maps the intricate, overlapping path of one man's journey and that of an entire country. It is a book about belonging, about whether to stay or go, and about the need to write new stories for our communities and ourselves.

From one to twelve apart from play Boys and girls have lots to say They laugh and cry and have fun to Always finding things to do Aunties uncles and lots more Sometimes come in through the door so written here some things they say while waiting to go out to play Seaside Christmas dentists to Playschool, paper planes that flew in verses here inside the pages It's clear that growing up takes ages

Come and meet the creatures As they are passing by Some of them they hop and crawl And others they can fly They play out in the garden Until they stop to eat So don't forget when passing To leave for them a treat

Midnight will greet you with whispers That invade your memory And haunt your dreams For soon the time draws near when the world will know the truth And then the dark lords will once again walk the land What went before was merely a beginning DCI Crawford threw the piece of paper to the ground Three years he had waited pursued by a demon that had no face Now as he prepares to retire a new wave of terror hits the streets of London and with the discovery of each victim his own past comes back to haunt him as evil is finally unmasked.

It is said that we fear that which we do not understand. That we cloak those fears with doubt, and that over time, they become fairy tales and nightmares. But what would happen if our fears became a reality? And so it came to pass. For some speak in hushed tones of the dark ones. They say they wait and watch from the shadows. DCI Crawford knew the truth, for he had faced those very demons and survived. Now only months away from retirement, he is assigned one last case. A series of strange and inexplicable murders. And as the killer weaves a trail of deception, an old adversary returns to orchestrate a new reign of terror from the shadows.

My Poet Tree reflects my personal journey through life expressed in verse From the consequences of war in Painted In Red to the emotional turmoil of lost love in Crippled Smiles. We cross a landscape where the frailty of age is captured in Of Our Lives. Then we pause for a moment to consider the guilt or innocence in This Cell My Prison, before moving on to the fragile state of this planet in I Challenge The Day. there are many twists and emotions are examined throughout the book an example being We Wear It Well. Occasionally we stop to smile as in There's An Elephant In My Garden. Before dipping in to memories of childhood as revisited in There's A Secret In My Cupboard. Then we leave behind the absurdity of imagined horror in Reaper; to slip into self-awareness in Made Of Stone. Along the way we will relive the terror of an ocean storm in The Sinking Of The Santa Fe. Then move to a poem titled That's My Life, an attempt to understand the things that motivate the way we are. Included is a tribute to a great poet in An Ode To Edgar Allan Poe. So I welcome you to join me, and share the experiences and memories that is My Poet Tree

A broken heart and a moment of drunken bravado inspires middle-aged, and typically rather cautious, journalist Mike Carter to take off on a life-changing six month motorcycle trip around Europe. Never mind that he hadn't been on two wheels since an inglorious three-month teenage chapter involving a Lambretta, four crashes and an 18-month ban for drink-driving, a plan had begun to loosely form... And so, having completed a six day residential motorcycle course and hastily re-mortgaged his flat, Mike sets off alone, resolving to go wherever the road takes him and enjoy the adventure of heading off into the unknown. He ends up travelling almost 20,000 miles and reaching the four extremes of Europe: the Arctic Circle in the north, the Mediterranean coast in the south, the Portuguese Atlantic to the west and the Iraqi border of Turkey in the east. But really it's a journey inwards, as, on the way, Mike finds his post-divorce scars starting to heal and attempts to discover what he, as a man in his forties who hasn't quite found his place in the world, should be doing. Self-deprecating, poetic and utterly engaging, his is a heroic journey taken for the rest of us too scared to leave our 9 to 5 office-bound existence.

This is the story of a licked clean dish And a very hungry cat who's dinner he has missed So he set off for the garden To find something to eat And here on the pages are the creatures he did meet

What would happen if you were cycling to the office and just kept on pedalling? Needing a change, Mike Carter did just that. Following the Thames to the sea he embarked on an epic 5,000 mile ride around the entire British coastline - the equivalent of London to Calcutta. He encountered drunken priests, drag queens and gnome sanctuaries. He met fellow travellers and people building for a different type of future. He also found a spirit of unbelievable kindness and generosity that convinced him that Britain is anything but broken. This is the inspiring and very funny tale of the five months Mike spent cycling the byways of the nation.