Blogs

It was a long drive to Dieppe and an even longer trip back late on Friday. Eurotunnel were experiencing problem and we had a six hour delay. What should have been a 20.50 train back turned out to be a 01.30 train back. Anyway, back to Rio. He came 5th. I'm dissapointed but also releived. He came back safe and sound although puffing a bit at the end. He's still only four and still growing and developing and this was his first time over the big...

This was the big one. This was massive. This was when life and the death of our season hung by the ligaments of a severed sheep’s head (much has been made of our Asian friend’s propensity to sacrifice sheep for a good luck omen and as a kind of voodoo-we just eat sheep and of course we woo them to death with love songs of pastures green). Anyway, Shak are shak. They are the worst team I’ve seen in the Champions League and how they got to the...

Well, my horse, Rio De Sivola has his first overseas venture. On Friday he's running in France. Dieppe to be precise. It's a four year old Novice Chase. Something very rare in the UK, but the french love their young horses to go over the big fences. We always knew that he was going to be a horse for the big fences and he stays as well. In a few years time, who knows, maybe the Gold Cup at Cheltenham. But I'm dreaming of course! So, off tomorrow...

Robert Jack was a few years older and like the rest of us he liked a drink, but unlike the rest of us he even had a girlfriend. He lived in Trafalgar Street long before it was renovated. A few years down the line I heard he’d got slashed. His cheek was marked, but he still had that Mediterranean oily tanned skin and straight black hair and, when I saw him in the Peppermint Park later that week he still had a girlfriend, although it might have...

I have an interest in New Writing Scotland because I’m new, I’m Scottish and briefly had Zoe Strachan as a writing tutor. Whisper it, I also plan to send in something to New Writing Scotland 32 for consideration, or even publication. I’d say I won’t hold my breath, but that’s a cliché. Life writing is the ultimate cliché. You just live your life and write it down. What could be simpler? This is exactly what Haslam and Neale has done. This book...

Vin Jones writing in Observer Review, ‘The rights won in the 1960s by the black community need defending,’ had me thinking that many of the things he mentioned apply equally to the poor in Britain. ‘When you live in a country where one of the major political parties, by its own utterances and plans and designs, has written off 14% of the population strictly because they’re black [poor and working class]. It’s hard to say we live in some kind of...

There’s a certain symmetry about someone that’s rich, even if it’s only a Ben Mez rich writing a story about accidental billionaires. I’ve accidentally burnt myself, fell into a greenhouse and almost drowned a few times. I think it only fair that I too should accidentally become a millionaire, or billionaire. I’m not that bothered. I’ll leave it to fate. For anybody that doesn’t know this film is about the creation of Facebook in 2003 and in...

The second-half substitute Ricky Lambert, on for an ineffectual Wayne Rooney, scored the winner. A dream debut for the England striker. In truth he could and should have had a hat-trick. The Scotland defence buckled after being 0-1, then 1-2 ahead at the start of the second half. I expected us to get beat. In every sense we’re a team of midgets. None of the Scotland team play for a top English Premier league team. Whittiker can’t get a game for...

Adapted from Denise Mia’s novel by the writer and director David Kane, the 1984 miners’ strike is the backdrop for this crime drama. And what a crime it was 84 000 miners then—and then there was none, but that’s a different story. Here it was a simple case of disinformation and the Government using GCHQ to spy on the miners’ leaders and there was a bit of murder thrown in. I like Paddy Meehan (Jayd Johnstone) and Ford Kiernan as her cynical...

Winner of The Guardian First Book award 2005 and it’s easy to see why. I’ve known about this book for a while and it was one of the thousands of must read book that remained unread. If you’ve not read it, read it! Put it to the top of the pile of books you must read. Stuart Shorter was a wee guy with lots of things wrong with him. If I were a social worker I’d say he had “ issues”, but I’m not, so I’ll just say he was completely fucking bonkers...