As the day continues we interview people at the station. The beautiful young woman whose parents were from Pakistan stays in the mind. She was at university and torn because her mother who was born in britian was married to a man from Pakistan, her father, whom her mother clearly hated. “my mother cries every day” This articulate teenage girl drew us into her dilemma: Two parents both who wanted to control who she married but both whom wanted her to marry someone from a different country. There are stories like opened envelopes waiting to be read at Galsgow Central. Read more [...]

There’s something classic, something sepia about the stillness of the bar lounge. It’s a scene from an Agatha Christie novel. The lights are low and relaxed. Twelve round tables hug the windows of a carriage. Blood red curtains are folded back in concertina as night fills the window between. The carpet is the same colour. There’s a mysteriousness about the grey gentleman sipping red wine or the couple sat across from each other whose elbows are on the table allowing their four hands to make one moving sculpture between each others lips. All we need now, is a murder. Read more [...]

The documentary took me from the grave of a slave named Sambo, in Morecambe to the Slavery museum in Liverpool. I remember about ten years ago taking black American jazz musicians to that same museum. They wept openly and said that there was nothing of the kind in America. We then went on to play a packed live gig at The Blue Coat Chambers where they poured gin on the stage and mid tune started a cleansing libation. If the North West had not played such a central part in the slave trade the cities would not be the great cities they are today. They owe a lot to slavery and the least these cities can do is acknowledge the fact. The programme will be broadcast in the North West region on 27th of this month at about 7pm, or is it 7.30pm. Read more [...]

This is a message to the students at The University of Wales, Newport,  the competition winners and the participants and to any others who came to the event. It is now 6pm and I am really really sorry Read more [...]

Tonight  I "performed" my poems on stage at Marlborough College and afterwards had supper with the students. The event was hilarious and the food cooked by Mrs Ponsford was astounding. The students Read more [...]

I am in Sweden but I am performing in Alsager college in Uk at 7.30pm tonight - here's the journey.  Up at 6am get plane from Umea to Stockholm. Arrive 10am Next wait hours in airport. Then catch  Read more [...]

This is the airport.  Up at 7am on a plane to Umea via Malmo.  The picture is from the airport. Back in London today Rankin launches his exhibition at The South Bank,  outside the royal festival Read more [...]

I’m on a train speeding through Sweden. Sweden is white, white white. Tonight is the penultimate performance of Something Dark my one man show in a city called Hasselholm, (pop. 28,000) in the south of Sweden. It’s three an a half hours from Stockholm by train. Sweden has a population of 9 million people. About sixty percent live in the capital, Stockholm. London alone has 8 million. Read more [...]

I’m staying in Stockholm for a night at The Columbus Hotel, with Anna. Before you get the wrong idea Anna Cole is the lighting technician for my play Something Dark. She is brilliant. The hotel built in 1780 was once a prison. The Columbus hotel has winding corridors with metal doors and a massive wine cellar. It’s everything but a prison. The wooden floors in the corridors are decorated with lush hand woven Indian carpets. I slept like a baby while snowflakes sloped from the sky. Tomorrow I’ll be getting a train to Hasselholm. The GF called me to say that The Guardian featured me in Portrait of An Artist . I did that interview months ago. Read more [...]