Blogs

Funeral today. If history lived it wasn’t with Ian Betty. I don’t know if I’ll go. He was the broccoli of the human race; people said they liked him. A heart attack. He lives on in Facebook, which is worse than death. Shame not in the death, but the fact they’ve got to sell football cards in the pub to pay for the £500 deposit so that the funeral parlour will take him. They can be a bit sniffy. With Ian Betty that is understandable. He’d red...

The Accused. It’s half time and 2-1 to the prosecution so far. Other results are just in. J’Accuse and the Dreyfus affair: with Zola popping up in the box to leave it wide open. And there are obvious parallels between in the beginning was the word (GOD) and, every …had a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order (Godard) and Waiting for Godot: a dull 0-0 draw. Jimmy McGovern also left it late. Helen played by Julie...

The first in a projected series of Omnibus editions of ABCtales Magazine is now available to buy or download: http://stores.lulu.com/abctales Collecting issues 1-3, cover dated 2006. Featuring: Hazel McSporran, Pete Allen, Hayley Webster, Liana Hemmett, Tim Clare, Kirsten Irving, John Thomson, Kevin Marman, Colin Tuff, Dan Derrett, Swep Lovitt, Jon Stone, Joe Dunthorne, Foster Trecost, Scharlie Meeuws, Alison Dunne, Jayne Dunsmuir and Nigel...

Genova (2008) Michael Winterbourne starring Colin Firth. Two children. Two Adults. One car. You know somebody is going to die, especially as there was a bit of rough-housing going on in the back. The children were putting their hands over each other’s eyes. Inevitably, the younger of the two, did the same thing with mummy. Instead of telling her off and giving her youngest a good old fashioned thrashing (this is for picking your nose in the back...

Interview with Sir Donald Akenbourgh. Beatrice Foster (anthropologist), BF: Sir Donald what are your views can the human population keep growing in the same way. Donald Akenbourgh (DA): Yes. I’m optimistic that men and women will continue to have sex. BF: The Oogonyu tribe have a dream culture in which certain totemic animals come to them to teach them specific lessons. What kind of spirit animal do you think would come to you? DA: An apple. BF...

The Accused. Anyone that ever dogged school in the 1970s knows from Crown Court that two-scaled- justice is a fickly bitch. That’s two accused in Jimmy Mc Govern’s stable so far and 2-0 to the prosecution. There’s only four programmes to go so I’m hoping for a late run of not-guiltys so that we are left with a cliff-hanger finish. Monday nights was the better of the two shows so far. Two lads, best mates, join the same regiment and get posted to...

The old imperishables, distinguished looking books of a certain era, scratched and tried to jump into my hand and sit on my lap. They know well my habits. ‘Where have you been?’they cried in unison. ‘I’ve been trying on another life. But they didn’t believe I’d neglect them just because of that. ‘It didn’t fit’. They believed that. The dusty crones waited for me to talk more man-soiled rubbish; every page an invitation. ‘There’s always somebody...

Into the Wild (2007) is Sean Penn’s baby. He got the money together to make a film about Chris McCandless who gave everything away, even his Giro, and went to live in the great American wildness and find himself. At almost three hours long he must have got lost a few times, or my eyes kept opening and shutting. I gave up. Even my early training in watching Lassie and Skippy the Bush kangaroo wasn’t enough. I mounted the stairs a broken and tired...

George Mackay Brown. Celia I thought I’d ready George Mackay Brown because I could vaguely remember The House with Green Shutters. But that was George Douglas Brown. Ceila is probably what would be called a novella, which means it’s short, about 30 pages, but perfectly formed. It’s a slow burner. One of my favourite lines is ‘Faces tell lies to one another…The truth gets buried under smiles.’ There is a consistent strand of psychological...

08/10/09 Some notes on setting the time. Setting from the command line The date command: date MMDDhhmm.ss (Seconds are optional; omit .ss if just setting to nearest minute.) To set the year too: date MMDDhhmmYYYY.ss (Once again, seconds are optional.) To discover what time and date the server thinks it is, use the date command without arguments. Good to know, but it shouldn't be necessary to set the time from the command line. The ntp daemon The...