celticman's blog

‘Only a fool thinks that women love differently.’ So says a character in one of her short-stories. ‘Fools and pedagogues.’ Saints and Sinners, take your pick. Edna O’Brien offers all of these things and none, because women’s treachery is different to men’s? ‘Rafferty’, the opening story in the collection. An Irish man in London. He’s been in the English capital all of his working life and now retired longs to return the auld country. He’s loved...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002v48h/to-think-like-a-killer-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002vd9y/to-think-like-a-killer-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002vdb0/to-think-like-a-killer-series-1-episode-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind:_To_Think_Like_a_Killer When Ann Burgess left school in 1957, former General and war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the richest...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002tb7c/brother https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother_(2022_film) Brother is one of those films I know I’m going to like right from the get-go. I haven’t read the book. And I’m a bit thick. Even after the film ended I wasn’t quite sure how to place the music (hip-hop) and what part of America this acclaimed Canadian drama was set in the 1990s (Scarborough, Toronto). My sister lives in Canada in one of those...

Man of Bones is the third in the murder-mystery series featuring Revol Rossel. Setting is everything. It returns to the bleak, frozen landscape of Leningrad, winter 1953. Lowly militiaman Rossel has miraculously survived the NKVD and being part of a punishment battalion during the siege of Leningrad and following The Great Patriotic war, (Soviet casualties around 20 million), been deported to Siberia, which is a death sentence in all but name,...

A Traitor’s Heart is the second in a trilogy of books featuring Revol Rossel, a former militia lieutenant in Stalinist Leningrad. His nemesis, Major Nitkin, who literally cut short his career as a prodigiously talented violinist in the Leningrad Conservatory by cutting off two of his fingers and mutilating others, but also has the top-level connections in the Kremlin to protect him. At the beginning of the A Traitor’s Heart , Rossel is so far...

Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Show, BBC iPlayer, directed by Jessica Dimmock, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt0/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt1/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002rvt3/captive-audience-a-real-american-horror-story-series-1-episode-3 Wikipedia ‘My father was...

‘The word paranaza comes from the sea’. Learning the trade. In Neapolitan dialect, paranza originally refers to a small fishing boat. Very young boys as crew, who go out at night with bright lamps to lure fish to the surface and catch them quickly. The small stuff in the bottom of the nets is thrown together and cooked in a local much- loved and cheap dish. Little fisherman become big fisherman by staying close to the shore. They are both...

Scotland were booed off Hampden Park on Saturday night. Japan outplayed us and scored in the last ten minutes to win 1—0. Team captain, Andy Robertson told fans to get a grip. After all, Japan also hammered England 1—0 at Wembley. That kinda cheers us up. One team’s woes are another team’s honey. Italy, after all, went into national mourning, after failing to qualify for the third World Cup on the bounce. The Republic of Ireland and Wales both...

Edna O’Brien (1962) The Lonely Girls. Edna O’Brien (1964) Girls in Their Married Bliss. Edna O’Brien’s trilogy of books which begins in rural Ireland, moves to Dublin and ends in the less than swinging sixties of London. Kate and Baba against the world. An era of the ‘Angry Young Men’ on stage and screen. But there’s no room for women. Baba steps out of Dublin and into London as easily as she’d change a new jacket at home. Caithleen/Cait/Kate is...

The Singer Story: Made in Clydebank (2019), BBC Scotland, Directors Barthelemy Francis Corbelet, Yoann Fabrice Le Dantec, Narrator Marc Jennings. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00051z7/the-singer-story-made-in-clydebank I’m old enough to remember Singers. All that’s left is some red brickwork and the original staircase that leads up to Kilbowie Road. All of my partner’s aunts worked in the factory and her sister and her brother-in-law...