Gregory’s World
As featured in Pershore, Upton, Powick,
Kempsey, Whittington & Broadway Times
www.hughescompany.uk
Hello, fellow reader!
Hello, fellow reader!
Hey, steady on there, fellow reader. You’re a little giddy. Come out of the sun, have a sip of my water. It feels like we’re trapped inside my air fryer. Back at home, a breeze on a hot day provides a cool respite. Here in Marrakesh, the winds are dry and beating. They cook you in half the time, and I prefer my fellow readers not to be rotisseried, so come on inside with Natdog and Big Man Sam.
Welcome to Jemaa el-Fnaa, a souk (marketplace) in central Marrakesh. Enter a network of passages, a treasure trove of stalls. Listen to the hubbub of Arabic, French and English voices, people selling, haggling, exchanging. Smell the flavoured air, the tang of olive brine, spices piled high in molehills of yellow, orange and red; cumin, paprika, hibiscus, rosemary, saffron, cinnamon, chamomile. Kebabs sizzle, prunes glisten, and – woah, watch out – motorbikes sputter round the sharp bends and rumble past us.
Pay attention, too. These caverns of leather sandals, samosas and gold genie lamps can become battlegrounds of mind games. Any travel guide will tell you that the prices here are negotiable. Haggling is a crucial part of navigating the souk. The vendors often start high with the prices. They must catch out a lot of unwitting tourists. One Moroccan Dirham is equal to 0.079 Pound Sterling. I struggled with converting prices on the spot and fully understand why other people must get bamboozled in the heat of the moment. Thankfully, I had Natdog and Big Man Sam to prepare me, though I still have much to learn.
Half an hour ago, I was the first in our group to haggle. A stall selling carved, wooden items – turtles, hedgehogs, camels, footballs, Tintin characters – drew me in. A small chess set in particular caught my eye.
“This was 650,” explained the stallholder. “For you, I give you 420.” (Roughly £33.)
“Hmm. Would you take 150?” (Roughly £12.)
A sharp intake of breath. “Is not profitable. No. No.”
“150?” Digging my heels in doesn’t come naturally to me. I didn’t really enjoy this pressure.
“Mmm, no. I give you 380.”
“150?”
“300. I give you 300. My final offer.” He bagged the chess set. In the end, I gave in and paid 300 (roughly £24). He shook my hand with a smile that said I hadn’t been tough enough.
Now’s our chance to watch and learn, fellow reader. Look, Natdog is haggling for a conical tagine dish. First, he refuses to say how much he’s willing to pay. The stallholder reluctantly sets a price of 200 Dirhams. Natdog stands his ground at 90. He is one tough cookie. He refuses to crumble. Three times, the stallholder repeats 200. Three times, he stares him down. Three times, Natdog resists the pressure. For a moment, they are locked in a tense face-off, two players in a showdown of tough negotiation. Then, as Natdog makes to leave, the stallholder gives in. 90 it is!
Impressive. Okay, my turn. I’m drawn to another alcove of wooden items, this time to a model rowing boat. I genuinely have only 120 Dirhams left in my wallet. The stallholder insists on 300 – okay, 200 – 170, final offer! He lets me hold the boat and sniff the authentic Juniper wood. But I can’t afford it, I have to walk away.
“La shukran. No, thank you.”
I move on. The thing is, I really want that boat. I try a few different stalls who are also selling boats. No luck. 120 isn’t enough. Eventually, I find my way back to the stallholder who sold me the chess set. Will he be in a generous mood? After a team talk, we decide to deploy the feminine touch: Natdog’s sister comes with me.
“I have 120,” I explain to the stallholder.
“For you, 420.”
Ouch. We’re in for a difficult game. Proposal by proposal, smile by smile, we chip 420 down to 150. Without Natdog’s sister, I wouldn’t stand a chance. Her presence does indeed make him more generous. Nearly there … nearly there … At long last, he agrees. Yippee! I buy the boat for 120 Dirhams, we shake on it, and this time, the smile is mine.
Now then, anything that catches your eye?
August 2026 - Art of the Deal
The University of Birmingham has its own personal train station, an iconic red-brick clock tower, and an on-site Starbucks! What’s not to like? But tear yourself away from those Espresso Macchiatos for just five minutes, fellow reader. Today, there’s another reason to love this place. Today, is the Writing West Midlands’ National Writers Conference, a wordy mouthful reaching out to the wordiest people around. Writing West Midlands is an organisation behind a range of initiatives and events designed to support writers across our region.
Writing is often a solo affair. A desk, a cuppa, and a word document can be our closest friends, so as you can imagine, the conversation is pretty one-way. We jot, scribble, append and tap. We go over sentences in our mind the same way you might work a boiled sweet in your mouth, waiting for the moment the words sound right, the moment you crack into the sugary core. There’s a great deal of joy in the process, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to sometimes feeling isolated.
This is what makes the Conference so great, an opportunity to say hi to like-minded creatives of all ages in a lecture theatre that buzzes with dreams. So, come on then! Find your name badge, grab yourself a tote bag, and let’s say hi to some people …
Haha, that was fun, right? Okay, you might not be interested in writing at all – you might have a thing for cricket, finance or interpretative dance – but I thought some of the advice from today might be useful. The theme of this year’s conference was ‘A Writer’s Journey’. The talks shared a calm, steady, more reflective approach, focusing on the process of getting to the place we want to be – though multiple speakers pointed out that this ‘place’ always changes as we journey ever on.
Casey Bailey, a Birmingham-based poet and playwright, delivered a keynote address: ‘On Track or Off Track: Are We Trains?’ His talk revolved around the phrase: ‘on track’. We use it all the time to refer to our progress. Although this can be useful, it can trick us into thinking we always have to know where we’re going, as though we’re travelling from point A to B and somehow failing if we don’t have everything figured out. There’s a danger that some of us become unnecessarily hard on ourselves if we don’t stick to ‘schedule’. Life throws hurdles at you with one hand and opportunities with the other. We adapt, learn, compromise, and journey on. ‘Let’s be honest,’ he said. ‘Even the trains don’t run on time.’ Feeling like a train? He admitted he sometimes felt like HS2! Working towards something can be very positive, but it shouldn’t make us forget that we often have more choice than we think we do. What even is the right way, anyhow?
One of Bailey’s poems is displayed across the wall at the University train station. I noticed it as we returned to the station. It made me smile.
What I gleaned from today’s conference was this: our mindset is the axis on which we turn. It doesn’t matter how many times I think I understand this. I understand it more and more as Gregory’s World gets bigger and bigger. I might well be passing on advice you’re already well familiar with. If that’s the case, awesome! I hope to reach your level as I keep learning and experiencing things. We’re all moving at different speeds and in different directions. That’s part of the great thrill of it all!
Saying all that, fellow reader, it would be nice if our train got us home on time.
July 2026 - The Write Way
June 2026 - Turner
If you still carry cash and you’re fortunate enough to have a £20 note on you, why not take a closer look at it? The design of our current bank note celebrates a great artist. Two artists, technically - the King is a mean watercolourist in his own right. However, let’s focus on the young man featured on the back of the note. Enter: Joseph Mallord William Turner. He’s considered one of (if not the) greatest artists our nation’s ever had. It’s a funny coincidence, then, that he was born on 23rd April (a symbolic day - for England, at least - synonymous with St George and Shakespeare).
A childhood diet of Peter Pan and Pirates of the Caribbean, along with holidays in Cornwall, and day trips to the SS Great Britain in Bristol, embedded the image of a galleon on the high seas deep in my psyche. I find the old-fashioned ships comforting, awe-inspiring, exciting, and romantic. Turner’s been on my radar ever since Mum bought me a framed print of ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ (1838) from a car-boot sale when I was little. Often regarded as Turner’s most famous painting, the ‘Temeraire’ also features on the £20 note. I saw it in the flesh when I visited the National Gallery with school. I got an extra kick out of the fact that the same display featured in the James Bond film, Skyfall, the painting providing a neat metaphor for Bond - the romantic, larger-than-life hero - having to contend with a murky, modern world. When I went to uni, I took the framed print with me and displayed it on my desk; the ethereal galleon, the sooty steam tug, the burnished sunset, attracted my wandering eye as I typed out essays long into the night. For me, art is like classical music, WiFi or the human brain: I don’t pretend to understand it on a technical level, but I appreciate it.
For years, Tate Britain (home to the world’s largest collection of Turner artworks) has been on my London bucket list. A few weeks ago, after reading in a coffee table book that ‘Turner’s work cannot be reproduced. Even the best print only serves to awaken one’s curiosity about the original’, I couldn’t resist any longer. I hopped on a train to London, reunited with my paintballing brother-in-arms, Bman, and spent a very thoughtful afternoon in the Turner wing. His paintings are full of wrath. Smoke billows. Waves soar. Light whorls. His ships are ghostly, stencilled against a sunset or listing in the swells, emblems of Britain’s maritime expansionism. I wondered what Turner would paint if he was around today. Do we have equivalent romantic emblems any more? A human being dragged away by an AI doesn’t quite have that same visionary flare as the Temeraire and the tug, but maybe I’m not being visionary enough.
Like all the greats, Turner never finished honing his craft. From watercolour to oil-on-canvas, realistic to abstract, he worked to capture the experience of particular moments – a shipwreck, a passing train, an early-morning hunt. In an age before photos, TV or cheap Ryanair flights, he positioned his viewers amidst the sublime natural phenomena of a Europe which was only just emerging from the Napoleonic Wars. His self-portrait, featured on the £20 note, stands out to me - probably because of my age. He is twenty-four and has just fulfilled a lifelong goal of becoming an Associate Member of the Royal Academy. He stares directly at the viewer, well-dressed, confident. Yet I see someone who is still so visibly young, finding his feet in the world. He has made a commendable effort so far. Now, he braces himself for the adventure ahead.
‘Self portrait’ (c.1799) by J.M.W. Turner
Courtesy of Tate Britain
Dum-dum! beat our hearts. Dum-dum! beats the basketball. Shoes squeak on the gym floor. The Worcester Wolves close in, dribbling, dodging, chest-passing, shooting – score! The crowd erupts. They stomp their feet and jab the air with their foam fingers.
‘Let’s go, Worcester! Let’s go!’
Come and join us, fellow reader. Help yourself to one of Big Man Sam’s cheesy nachos. All of this was his idea. He invited me and Natdog along to the NBL semi-final – Worcester Wolves vs Manchester Magic – at the University of Worcester Arena. If you’re like me (and you were told off for using your knees in P.E. basketball at school, or you keep calling the ‘hoop’ the ‘goal’), then let me clarify some things. Manchester Magic are the ones in the white-on-red kit. Our Wolves are wearing the same colour scheme as a chocolate orange. The six-foot-tall, Looney Tunes-looking wolf by the hot dog stand is our mascot, Wolfie, and he will gladly have a selfie with you at halftime. But right now, we have a game to win.
“Deeeee-fence!”
Here come Manchester Magic. To be fair, it must be tough playing away from home. Every time they get a free throw, the arena trembles to a drum roll of feet – but falls totally silent if they actually score. A tad anticlimactic. It can’t be very conducive to self-esteem.
The Wolves triumph, 82-66! Time to queue up with all the six-year-olds and get a fist pump from each player. After the celebrations, we remember that a group chat of old Sixth Form friends has been buzzing away on our phones all evening. They’re out in Worcester tonight too.
“Wanna make this a double-bill evening, Gdog?”
“I think I do, Natdog.”
Let’s go! You’re invited too, fellow reader. Our night has already been awesome, but if you’ve never done a night out in Worcester, let me suggest a three-part framework to start with. It’s not the classiest, it’s not the most hygienic, but you have to be making a concerted effort to be miserable not to enjoy yourself.
Firstly, if you’re after a spot to warm up, catch up and booze up, there’s no establishment finer than Wetherspoons. It’s cheap and lively, the tables are sticky, the carpets are eggy, and, if you’re really lucky, the first floor bathroom might just leak through the ceiling into your seating area. Forge your way inside, pull a few tables together, avoid stepping in the last customer’s mayo-and-carpet-fluff pitta, activate the ‘Spoons app, and order two drinks at a time to avoid waiting aeons at the bar. Not if you’re at the back of the building, though – the deeper you go, the worse the WiFi gets, so the app won’t work. You’re off to a strong start!
Secondly, stagger over to Bierkeller. It’s my favourite club in Worcester. If you’re a fellow glasses wearer, your glasses may steam up, but that’s probably a good thing. You don’t want to look too hard at what’s all over the floor. Jump up onto the benches and bang your head like a woodpecker to anthems like ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘Shut Up and Dance with Me’.
Thirdly, when you start to yawn and the ceiling starts to rain, trudge to McDonald’s. Hurry, the bouncers will turf you out at 4am. Maccies is where we all seek refuge, a cheeky McNugget, and an answer to ‘what on earth just happened?’ Faces from your past can inexplicably wash up. Everyone’s numbed to zombies under the glare of bright lights. You feel a sense of camaraderie generated by collective fatigue.
My ears are muffled. My voice is croaky. My head is spinning. Okay, I think, let’s go.
Seagulls swoop and cry outside, clearing up the chicken strips you drop or forget as you rush to support your giddy/sobbing/intensely apologetic mate, or to chase after your Uber taxi that can’t find you. Home is just a speedy drive away. Unlock the front door as quietly as you can, creep upstairs, climb into bed and you’re done!
Right, same time next week?
May 2026 - Let’s Go, Worcester!
There comes a point when my hair gets so curly and so long that it starts to feel like a passenger hitching a ride on my head. When that happens, fellow reader, I know it’s time for a shearing.
I don’t know about you, but I go to the Turkish barbers in Pershore. It’s cool, down-to-earth, and the guys there are great. It was my reintroduction to the world of gents haircuts. Before that, during Covid, my sister used to sit me and Dad down on the patio, wrap a towel around us, and let rip with the clippers. And before that, I’d grown up with the more traditional understanding that guys’ haircuts never took longer than ten minutes. It was a deft, no-fuss procedure. Chop it back, get it out of your eyes and off your ears, and if it looks patchy in places, give it a few days and it’ll sort itself out. So, when I reintroduced myself to the world of gents haircuts, I was blown away to discover that it’s an expanding and exciting field.
I entered the Turkish barbers: hexagonal strip lighting, mid-2010s pop, shelves filled with sprays, products, potions and lotions, and – woah! I jumped as I glimpsed my shock of hair in the mirror. Wow, I’d outdone myself this time. But, then again, I always get my money’s worth. (I still remember walking into Steve’s barber shop one time with an equally impressive shock of hair. He told me to take my hat off.)
Result! There was only one customer ahead of me. Give it a few minutes, I thought, and it’ll be my turn in the chair. Ten more, and I’ll be out of here! Imagine my surprise, therefore, when this customer didn’t just get a trim. Over half an hour, he underwent a metamorphosis. I looked up from my phone, and he’d disappeared under a hot towel. Next, under a whipped blob of shaving foam. Pop a cherry on top, and this ice cream sundae would be complete. The barber shaved him, styled him, sculpted him, blow-dried him, misted him like a prize-winning fern. How much more could they shear, prune and pluck off this man? As if in answer, the barber went for his eyebrows.
I scratched my head. What exactly did I want done to me? I could reinvent myself, emerge from this emporium of gels and product a new person.
Nowadays, I’ve found my groove in this environment. I swung by the barbers recently. What is Easter if not a time for new beginnings? I stepped up to the podium, took off my glasses, and a blurry barber wrapped a blurry cloak around me.
“Grade two at the sides, shortish on top … Please.”
Somehow he translated my basic description into a satisfying end result. Getting my hair into a workable state was like tilling old soil. The barber sprayed it, raked it, sprayed it again, and raked it some more. Eventually, it flopped and swayed to the strokes of his comb. He combed it forward and pinched a tuft of hair between two fingers.
‘This short?’ His expectant eyes asked.
I encountered the same problem I always do. My glasses, like my hands, were trapped under the cloak. All I could see in the mirror was a blur of my floppy, wet hair.
“That’s great,” I said, just like when we all guess the letters in the opticians.
I put myself in the hands of his barbering instincts. After all, they’d never let me down. He sheared away. I became more aerodynamic by the second. I tapped my feet to the 2010s pop and daydreamed as the fine buzz of the clippers whirred in my ears.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“Oh.” Eyebrows! “No thanks.”
Close one. We Sidaways are renowned for our impressive eyebrows. I couldn’t jeopardise the family inheritance, could I? Maybe next time.
April 2026 - Close Shave
People in Farringdon smell so good! And it’s a good job they do, fellow reader, because we’re on the tube, home to Britain’s finest jostling shoulders, tetchy elbows and armpits that open inexplicably in your face.
I was heading to Farringdon to meet my sister, who’s been studying music production in London since September. En route, I enjoyed a ride on the smoother, sleeker, shinier Elizabeth Line (opened by the late Queen during her Platinum Jubilee). Then I reached my stop and the crowds swept me into a network of cavernous, space-age tunnels. I shivered with excitement. The scope, the magnitude, the energy of the city! At this stage in my life, it beckons to me. Everyone had a mission. Taking business calls on AirPods; wielding enormous Gucci shopping bags; swooshing with dark professionalism in ankle-length coats; saying: ‘Yeah, we should totally do that sometime’; sprinting like Bugs Bunny down the platform, squeezing onto a train that hit full capacity two stops ago, and risking being dismembered by the closing doors – all for a ride they could’ve caught again just three minutes later. Being able to hop on a train that runs every three minutes is euphoric.
Not that I’m completely dewy-eyed. I’m sure London life is relentless. The commute fries your noggin. Fewer people say hello or look up. I bet sitting at a table-for-one in the window of Pret a Manger, munching a sandwich while watching YouTube on your phone gets old quite quickly. That’s if you’re even fortunate enough to have a job. Still, on the whole, the idea of the city makes me feel magnetised.
My sister was outside the station, looking very independent and worldly. I was wearing the smart, puffy coat I got for Christmas (which makes me look just a tiny bit jacked) and, as she hugged me, she said: “Urrghh-ewww, you look like a man!” Good to know!
Seeking somewhere warm to caffeinate ourselves, we stumbled into a joint called Farmer J’s. Sixteen of these shops have sprung up around London in recent years. Associating farming with home rather than the metropolis, I couldn’t help but smile at their quirky branding. Farmer J’s packages the idea of farming into a boutique, health-food aesthetic. Move over, pie and chips! Make way for Gochujan salmon and spiced date sweet potatoes! How about some ponzu sesame broccoli and lime leaf tofu with passion fruit kombucha, served in a grab-and-go field tray? All I wanted was a coffee, but I was contending with a rice pudding-flavoured matcha latte! Instead of straw and rustic beams, I was surrounded by rubber plants and pastel-coloured tiles. The ‘staff only’ door to the kitchen said ‘farmers only’, but there wasn’t a wax jacket, fleece or flat cap to be seen. It made for a fun and hyper-real backdrop for a catch-up.
It was over too soon, of course. This is the life we live at the moment, straddling two worlds. But before you start worrying that all of this possibility and ponzu broccoli might’ve got to my head, let me assure you I was brought back down to earth as soon as I checked my trainline app. My train home was disrupted. A rail replacement bus service (ambling through every twist and bend of the Cotswolds) would add another hour onto my journey.
Finally, I thought, some normality.
March 2026 - Flavours of Farringdon
I dropped to the forest floor, breathing hard, crawling over pine needles and knotted roots. Fwut! Fwut! Shots zipped over our heads. I took cover behind a board of wood. Thud! I felt the impact through the board. The swift splatter-punch of a paintball.
Nothing says birthday celebration like being shot at in an icy wood for three hours. For my 22nd, I wanted to fulfil a long-time ambition and go paintballing. I called upon my brothers in arms (Natdog, Big Man Sam, and Bman) to join me in a battle that was guaranteed to be as epic as it would be sore. I drove us to our battleground, a forest on the outskirts of Kidderminster. First, we arrived at a lodge and signed away our rights to sue; then, as snow drifted between the trees, we suited up in camouflage. We strapped on hefty utility belts (loaded with tubes of paintballs) and donned our masks. Looking like scary Power Rangers, we were debriefed by our marshal.
‘Don’t remove your masks during the game’; ‘No, don’t bludgeon your mates with the butt of the paintball gun’; lastly (chillingly): ‘If someone throws a flash-bang grenade, take cover to avoid second-degree burns’. I exchanged a glance with the others.
“We probably should’ve taken the consent form more seriously,” mumbled Natdog.
Paintballs are small and squidgy, about the size of cherry tomatoes. Don’t be fooled, though, fellow reader. When your mate fires them in your direction at a velocity of three hundred feet per second, they can give you a cracking headache.
Fwut! Fwut! My every breath fogged up my mask. I peered out from my cover. On a tree stump a few feet ahead, stood an old jerrycan. This was our ‘bomb’. My team’s mission was to drop the bomb behind enemy lines without getting shot. Across the battlefield, sniping at us from a stockade, were Natdog and Bman. Natdog hadn’t been very lucky; his camo gear was a lighter, olivey colour - and we were in a forest of dark browns and greens. In an earlier game, I think I shot him in the head – I was lucky it was my birthday. Yellow paint dribbled down his fringe and covered his visor, impairing his vision. When our marshal tried to wipe it off, he just made a smeary mess. Bman could still see but he did also have a blob of yellow (and flecks of red!) on his forehead.
Fwut! “Aargh!” A shot clipped my head. It was like being whacked over the skull with a metal ruler. I crouched, buried my head in the earth and closed my eyes as tight as I could. Then I twisted around and spotted Big Man Sam flanking the enemy on one side, drawing their fire. I remembered the beaten-up old jerrycan. I could do it. I could reach it.
Aching with adrenaline, I jumped and opened fire. Fwut! Fwut! My volley painted the stockade walls - but it was enough, enough to buy me precious seconds. I scrambled into the open, clawing over the frosted earth, towards the ‘bomb’. I snatched the jerrycan and dragged it through the overgrowth. The stockade wall rose up in front of me. Come on! My body seized up. My calves were screaming. I flinched uncontrollably. Not now!
“Ten seconds left!” bellowed our marshal from behind the safety net - the area he called ‘the dead zone’.
I did a double-take. One of our team members had brandished a dark cylinder from his pocket. I gulped. A flash-bang! He must’ve purchased it during the break. He tore out the pin and hurled it at the enemy. Second degree burns, I thought and ducked. A crack! thundered through the forest and a searing flash of light stunned the enemy. Now was my chance! I wriggled forward, worming right up to the foot of the stockade wall. With a last burst of something close to bravery, I sprang and tossed the bomb over the wall.
I didn’t hear a dull thump of plastic. I heard a terrific boom!, I heard the enemy being blasted to smithereens, I heard the trumpets of victory!
And I looked forward to a warm, bubbly bath.