Nick Toczek's Blog

When my partner, Gaynor, was a teenager, she worked part-time at a chemist’s shop in Bradford. On one occasion, which she still remembers...

When our daughter, Rebecca, was a two-year-old I was in town with her. Suddenly she pointed across the road and said: "Look, daddy....

I’m a successful children’s poet. Often, at the end of a school visit, I’ll sell books, signing them and adding daft jokey messages....

“Ey-oop, Nick. ‘Ow’s thee’n’thine?” It’s 1984 and this is the standard greeting I get from Obesa, the Barnsley bard, as he walks into The...

From the first Stonehenge Free Festival in 1974 to the mega-millions invested in the current plethora of annual UK music festivals, the...

From the late seventies until the late eighties, I had two dogs. The first of these was Sinbad who was part-whippet, part-greyhound –...

Here’s how not to start your first US visit. It’s 1986 and I’m discovering that the American passport and immigration service is staffed...

Here's a second story from my unpublished collection, My Life Sentences. There'll be more to follow over the coming weeks. Nick. During...

In this blog I'll be publishing a series of true stories drawn from incidents and encounters which have made my life more interesting....