Blogs

Betsy Lerner (2017) The Bridge Ladies. A writer’s job is to remember. I’d a dream that I was staying in Betty Lerner’s house in New York, but it was Clydebank outside. I don’t know what she looks like. Nor does it matter. Most meetings I have are on the page. I write a blog with a handful of followers. I read one of her blogs and she asked a question about favourite books (that’s a hook so you’ll come back again). I typed in the classic, Growing...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jw7l/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f50h4m/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f50jqx/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-3 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0f50n4g/we-need-to-talk-about-cosby-series-1-episode-4 We Need to Talk About Cosby is a play on the title of Lionel Shriver’s...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jnfb/the-mormons-are-coming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormons Yesterday, I said to Sean, Robin’s dad, I couldn’t get swimming because there were two ducks in the swimming pool. ‘Really!’ he replied. ‘No,’ spluttered five-year-old Robin and Tilly at the same time. Shaking their heads and running away with that bemused expression that means that means they know what they’re about. ‘He’s a liar,’ said...

This buddy of mine has spine problems. Can’t sit or stand for certain periods of time. Uses a cane. Docs have told him he will eventually be in a wheelchair. Finally got his disability approved. I loaned him almost $10,000 to make his mortgage payments, to fucking live and not be homeless. Since his disability has been approved he’s sent me a check to pay me back, should be here any day now. He’s disabled. I ain’t. My VA counselor seems to think...

When the story first broke about the changes to Roald Dahl’s books for children, I was as outraged as everyone else. So Augustus Gloop in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” was no longer to be “enormously fat” but simply “enormous”. Mrs Twit in “The Twits” was changed from being “ugly and beastly” to just “beastly”. Lots of people have weighed in on the debate including Salman Rushdie, Brian Cox, Ricky Jervais and even Rishi Sunak has expressed...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeToo_movement I know a girl, a little girl, I think of her in that way because of her size. She’s tiny. She got raped. I know the rapist too. I also know his mum. She contacted me and asked me to stop calling him a rapist. ‘It was just one of those things,’ she said. ‘She panicked.’ The irony here is her daughter must have panicked too. Because she’d gone to the police alleging an acquaintance had raped her a few...

“TJ, get your ass down from that crane,” came over the radio. It was my foreman. See, I ain’t supposed to operate heavy machinery when I’m on my meds and he always knows when on on them on account of my . . . drowsiness, slowness, I guess, going through the day like a piece of driftwood. But, hell, I also ain’t supposed to drive when I’m drifting, so, I figured since I drove and arrived alive I’m good enough to get my ass up in a crane. Foreman...