Stephen Moran
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sjmoran.com
Stephen Moran
@sjmoran.com
930 followers 300 following 2K posts
London Irish from Dublin. 1954-2854. Published poetry, fiction and blogs. Made a living from computer programming. Banner photo: Shankill Road, October 2012. Website: StephenMoransMuseumOfIllusions.WordPress.com
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sjmoran.com
Post something random or you'll have an awful December.
Scribbled cartoon idea. Interrogation scene. Woman seated under desk lamp shining on her face. Officer standing behind desk. Officer: Are you the Lass of Aughrim, yes or no?! Woman: No comment.
November 28, 2025 at 2:30 PM
sjmoran.com
Photo from November last year. #billboards #BillPoster #Greenford
Daytime, only a little overcast, gable wall of a typical corner shop on a London high street, its name "Greenland" can be seen round the corner. A bill poster man in high vis overalls is high up on a ladder, replacing the poster on the top one of two huge billboards. The street below looks grubby with vestiges of graffiti on a large green wheely bin and general damp ground and faded white paint on the rendered gable. The bottom billboard advertises "West London's Rental Community - Greenford Quay" with a line of probably family woman and girls in the air with their hands up, having jumped for the shot. The top billboard is for "First Hindi Entertainment Channel" with a woman on the left in a sari, now more than half-replaced by an advert for "White Fox" with a woman in branded trackies on the right.
November 27, 2025 at 12:44 PM
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If you need a laugh. Though Snopes casts absolute doubt on this. #LetterOfThanks. It's been doing the rounds for a long time.
November 20, 2025 at 3:48 PM
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Afternoon light and shade today
Shadows of leaves amid otherwise floating sunbeams in a room with a table in the foreground with an outsize vase and red blooms and in the background looks like a piano with sheet music open and greeting cards, cluttered bookshelves in alcoves left and right. There's a large framed painting on the wall but obscured by shadows from a ficus tree out of shot on the right, where the sunlight comes from.
November 18, 2025 at 8:38 PM
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Photos: 1) Homemade quince jelly and scones with whipped cream. 2) Quinces on the small tree that produced about 20kg (2025).
Worktop with an open jam jar with dark red quince jelly labelled "quince jelly 28/9/2024" alongside a butter knife and a blue and white sideplate with two half scones loaded with cream and blobs of quince jelly Bushy tree about head height and as wide with quinces in a rustic garden setting
November 18, 2025 at 1:50 PM
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I used the last of the quince to make this "dulce de membrillo" (sounds better than "quince paste"). We had about 20 kilos of quince from one little tree (no exaggeration). I'll add a photo of the tree and of some quince jelly below. #video
November 18, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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Photo: Persimmons on a tree, in a pocket park near Kensal House, Ladbroke Grove, Thursday afternoon, 13 November 2025
Autumn scene, late afternoon. A tree viewed from above almost bare of leaves but bearing what looks like about 100 persimmons. It's set in a small square with wooden benches and some grass and a tall tree fern, of which only part can be seen in the shot.
November 15, 2025 at 12:57 AM
sjmoran.com
Fast train on the Chiltern Line this evening. I think you can see why I once called the cops on kids playing on the tracks. The fast trains don't stop at Sudbury Hill Harrow and come around a bend onto this section of the line.
Wet overcast evening. A train below the viewpoint is blurred from passing by at high speed amid autumn trees
November 10, 2025 at 5:42 PM
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Photo: Random peppers growing from some seeds that must have been in the waste water from the kitchen
Indoors. Close-up of a burgeoning green pepper amid various leaves with wallpaper and a mirror in the background, and other smaller peppers discernible
November 10, 2025 at 11:49 AM
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YouTube's pretty good guess about what I might like this morning #YourMix
November 7, 2025 at 12:00 PM
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"Remember remember the fifth of November." It's Guy Fawkes night. I hear lots of fireworks outside. Here's a Willesden Herald post from 2004. I took the photo outside Willesden Green station. Their Guy - an effigy of Saddam Hussein. "A Penny for Saddam" willesdenherald.wordpress.com/2004/10/23/a...
Night. Two girls with an effigy of Saddam Hussein in a supermarket shopping trolley, with a sign that says "PENNY 4 The GUY! thank you. EXECUTION 5th November"
November 5, 2025 at 7:59 PM
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Exhibit A
Tubs of Flora in a supermarket cooler labelled with a special offer, "Any 2 £5 / £4.65 each"
November 2, 2025 at 10:01 PM
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Trick or treat? I took this photo on Halloween in Willesden, many years ago. "Don't have nightmares."
Blurry photo of night scene, a small figure from waist up, all in blood red with large yellow and black eyes, with arms by side or possibly one hand in pocket out of shot, seen from doorstep against a sort of flowing background with smudged sodium light
November 1, 2025 at 11:55 AM
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It varies from day to day but an example of what YouTube showed today as the first few videos "Your Mix". #YourMix #Screenshot
Screenshot of a list of some YouTube music videos
October 27, 2025 at 7:12 PM
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Circus Brazil - Ealing Common - Fri 24 Oct to Sun 2 Nov #poster
A colourful A2 size (?) poster almost seemingly in midair attached to a hardly visible green wire fence in from of some autumn woodland. The colours are magenta for the inflated and wavy Circus Brazil on yellow background shading through lime to kelly green, featuring various impactful writing like "Feel the Samba Beat" "Book Now! Online" etc. On one side what looks like two motorcycle riders in helmets and ready for the Wall of Death, perhaps.
October 27, 2025 at 2:08 PM
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I can't wait to read The Blue of You by @troutiemcfish.bsky.social. I can still see the viewpoint from the landscape and feel the sea breeze along the shore, from stories that became part of it. Plus chuffed I got a mention in Acknowledgements. Buy: www.waterstones.com/book/the-blu... #ModernFiction
October 27, 2025 at 12:30 PM
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Public bridleway from South Vale to South Hill Avenue today #photo
Bright day portrait oriented view along a dry woodland path curving away into the distance, sunlit and criss-crossed by shadows of branches, framed by greenery, scrub, scrawny trees and taller trees. There are traces of blue sky above and a glimpse of what might be a white gable or possibly an optical illusion.
October 23, 2025 at 7:14 PM
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Cat on a hot tin sewage pumping station access hatch cover (video)
October 23, 2025 at 7:05 PM
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I've managed to get hold of the plaque layout for my wild cherry tree contribution to the public art project #Amaptocare by Johan Gerz. The tree itself is no more, but fear not, it made way for development with dozens of other trees. So "ave atque vale" my poor martyred wild cherry tree. #Ballymun
Stephen Moran - Wild Cherry - November 2005 I heard the cranes on tracks singing to progress when they built their concrete house of cards. A hollow evicted became a hill. Cubitt Haden & Sisk raised seven giant mausoleums to seven system-built heroes. Spiral arms gerrymandered out across constituencies. Refugees fell in from the tumbling city. Now where hundred-foot lighting masts used to sway, the hill has been righted back to earth. Where only the odd sapling pined, a forest advances from Santry woods south. Listen to the singing of blackbird and robin in the branches now, and circling above in their changeless Dublin accent, the seagulls still crying, still laughing. (c) Jochen Gerz amaptocare 2006 - #286 - Commissioned by Ballymun Regeneration Limited
October 21, 2025 at 11:46 AM
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Photos from a rainy afternoon today of autumn scenes in Harrow. The poem is from 2021.
Overcast rainy afternoon, wet black asphalt bend in a road with autumn leaves on the ground and trees changing colour Railway track with dense tall trees on one side changing to autumn colours and some scraggy buddleia withered and gone to seed in the foreground. There are houses in the far distance, also autumn coloured. The sky is full of pale grey rainclouds. View of a a bend in a black asphalt road and pavement on a rainy overcast afternoon with rusty autumn leaves strewn around and trees in various stages of autumn transition. There is a street sign low on one side that says "South Vale". Day of the Flying Leaves Our supple living green has turned to paper. Rusty, soon-to-be shadows dash around. The rushing south-westerly is a friend, Says anyway it's time to blow this town. Autumn rain darkens terracotta tiles to match the rotting leaves, tones down white eaves, redbrick walls and gables, soaking pavements from beige to brown. Even the clouds, leading my way at dusk, back down this road in Harrow, kiss goodbye to pearlescent yesterdays, thinking, echoing only woodsmoke. (SJM)
October 19, 2025 at 10:40 PM
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Contents list
October 19, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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Sample pages
October 19, 2025 at 3:23 PM
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The reviews are in.
One nice thing about Moran's poetry, it takes a bit of the pressure off McGonagall (The Honest Scotsman)
Once-in-a-lifetime, orgasmically brilliant book (Willesden Herald)
Once-in-a-lifetime - but why did it have to be mine? (Anon.)
Mindblowing. Train AI on this. Haha (PJ Proby)
Cover "flat" for Ghosts and Pigeons by SJ Moran
October 19, 2025 at 12:39 PM
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Accident at South Vale, Harrow willesdenherald.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/a...
October 9, 2025 at 9:11 AM
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Photo: Hartington Close, Harrow, Sunday, 5 October 2025
Day, bright but with cloudy bluish sky. A quiet street, looking into what seems to be a cul-de-sac with big trees all around and across the (small) "horizon"in full leaf but yellowing and with quite a few yellow leaves strewn all around. Grass verge on one side. Some cars parked further along.
October 6, 2025 at 12:54 PM