A F Harrold

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Welcome to the Quirkstandard's Alternative Shop

Quirkstandard's Alternative is an A.F. Harrold publishing venture, a small press dedicated to AFH's various entertaintments.

Over the coming months and years it will unveil new and exciting books.

The first title was released in April 2008, an instrumental music CD was released in October 2008,
a limited edition hardback was published in November 2008 and a collection poetry for kids in 2009.

2010 will see the first comic novel be published along with other unplanned delights.

You can make purchases by sending cheques for the appropriate amounts made payable to 'A.F. Harrold' to 79a Northumberland Avenue, Reading, RG2 7PT, UK
or you can use the exciting PayPal links next to the items to use your credit/debit card.

Feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions or if you just wish to be friendly.

Flood - New Poems - now just published

Published by Two Rivers Press.

'A.F. Harrold's poems are so immediately engaging and amusing that there is a danger of missing their depths. They are verbally scrupulous, exact and minutely observant. These poems are the real thing: serious about being human and being at home in the world.' - Bernard O'Donoghue

'The poems in this collection wear their scholarship lightly, often with a formal dexterity that is deeply satisfying. A.F. Harrold doesn't censor his extraordinary and generous imagination; he enters the territory between this world and whatever comes after it, writing so clearly and tenderly about death, memory and love that I felt both bruised and stroked.' - Catherine Smith

This collection contains a wide variety of poems exploring language, names, hope, food and friendship, but really supports itself on two central sections - Nine Death Poems and Thirteen Love Poems - which form a pair of masses around which everything else orbits. It's actually not a bad collection at all.

Available Now - £8 + £1 UK postage...

or - £8 + £2 international postage...

I Eat Squirrels - Poetry for kids (2009)

This book contains poems and pictures that normal children might not like.

There is stuff in here that is just not normal, not natural and not entirely right. There are also things which are almost exactly right. There are disgusting things happening with horrible food. There are animals acting very oddly. There are people who don't wash, doughnuts that can't escape, pirates who are too nice and dogs who seek revenge for terrible wrongs.

Oh, it's all good stuff, and funny too.

Buy the book - £7 plus £1 postage (£8 total)

Buy the CD of the book - £5 plus £1 postage (£6 total)

Buy the book & CD together - £10 plus £1 postage (£11 total)

The Man Who Spent Years In The Bath

A brand new book of poetry and prose stories and observations and fantasies including things that go bump in the bath, in the night, in the garden, at parties, in Russia, in Bloomsbury and in art galleries. Very silly, quite funny and featuring a handful of embarrassingly brilliant puns.

Includes The Man Who Spent Years In The Bath, The Sitwell Song, The Edgar Degas Poem, A Party At George Gershwin's, Water - A short History, Sir Isaac Newton, Testimony Of A Mediaeval Monk, I Gave My Heart To A Sailor, The Jubilate Balneis (Rejoice In The Bath), Jam, The Man Whose Bed Was A House and many others, plus specially commissioned superb illustrations.

“George Eliot dancing a fandango, a voyage to Trousers Island, an analysis of the etymology of jammy dodgers - this volume has everything one has come to expect from the canyons of AF Harrold's extraordinary imagination. Except yaks. There are no yaks. Which is curious.” – Elvis McGonagall

“Much more fun than a rubber duck.” – Elvis McGonagall

- £7 + £1 UK postage...

or - £7 + £2 international postage...

or - mishapes - several copies arrived from the printer with misprinted covers - the contents are entirely undamaged, but the cover lacks blue ink - special price £4 + £1 worldwide postage...

Postcards from the Hedgehog (2007)

Published by Two Rivers Press.

A book of poetry, filled with silliness and nonsense all in some way related to the mighty fine zoology of the planet Earth. (This does contain poems about Yaks, but also about finches, tuna, cats, dogs, plankton, ducklings, giraffes, hedgehogs, centipedes, cattle, dugongs, manatees, pavements, bumblebees, trees, camels, monotremes, mice, elephants, fish, Noah, dingos, yams, donkeys, polar bears, penguins, hares, parrots, badgers (et al), sea slugs, bears, lions, boys, fruit flies, snakes, sheep.)

'More naturally selective than Darwin, more probing than Palin - and a damn sight funnier than Bellamy - this is a delightful zoological garden of vertebrate verse. AF has captured some fine specimens, whihc he disects witha quipping quill.' - Marcus Moore, Spiel Unlimited

'Postcards from the Hedgehog sustained me for the whole duration of a bus-ride to Mortlake, and made me forget that I was having to stand. By the time we reached Barnes pond, I was even tapping my foot, I think.' - Rachel Pantechnicon.

- £7 + £1 UK postage...

or - £7 + £2 international postage...

Logic And The Heart - Love poems 1999-2003 (2004)

Published by Two Rivers Press.

'Written with the metrical energy and wit familiar to audiences of AF Harrold's work as a performance poet, these sensuous love poems speak also with an impressive delicacy and resonance. Inhabiting that threshold world between the material and the dream, thought and feeling, logic and the heart, Harrold charts with true musicality love's loss and gain. its twilight territory 'in the silence between breathing'.' - Jane Draycott

'These are bearish poems which embrace the reader. They are alert to life's amazing moments as well its dangers and they are warm, sensuous and delighting in detail. Concerned with the big matters of life: death and love, these are brave poems which spring from compassion and kindness. AF Harrold is an inspired performer: these poems show that his poems have a life of their own on the page as well as retaining the music of the spoken word.' - Polly Clark

Click here for some sample poems from the book.

And click here to read some reviews of the book.

Available Now - £8 + £1 UK postage...

or - £8 + £2 international postage...

Close Your Eyes And It Glows In The Dark (2008)

new CD - brand new instrumental music

An instrumental musical extravanganza of indescribable stylings - piano etudes, sombre atmospherics and quirky jaunty little things combine to make an utterly intriguing aural meal fit for anyone with an interest in the inexplicable. For samples of the sort of thing on the CD visit the A.F. Harrold Electric Music-Box My Space space and listen to the MP3s that are there - some of these are on the CD and some aren't.

Track listing: After What You've Just Said ... I'll Let You Look In The Wardrobe ... An Hour On Her Own ... How The Deuce Did You Know That? ... It's Close Enough To Touch ... William Sets Off To Invade A New Country ... Did You Find The Language? ... The New Skyline ... Spirit & Opportunity ... That Was The End Of The Conversation ... Minding The Gaps ... He Came Out The Same Day ... Think It Possible You May Be Mistaken ... Until Matters Improve ... The Winter Warmth ... You've Lived In The Garden Of Eden

- £5 + £1 UK postage...