celticman's blog

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002q9qq/confessions-of-a-killer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002q9sg/confessions-of-a-killer-series-1-2-judgement-day Why would a killer admit to being a killer? Confessions of a Killer are as old as Adam and Eve, Cain and Able. Printed fiction and stage-plays such as Jekyll and Hyde , fed into a penny-dreadful need to know more. To feel more. To become involved in what happens next. True-crime...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002pvjy/lollipop Wikipedia Lollipop is a film with a simple enough plot. Molly Brown (Posy Sterling) is a recently paroled mother. She wants to get her kids back before she does anything else, which is heart-warming. A familiar fix for the 60%-70% of the 3500 women imprisoned in England and having children under 12, mostly serving sentences of less than 12 months. Unless you’ve got money, are comfortably...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kindness_of_Strangers_(film) Sometimes we don’t know what to write. I thought this film would be shite, but it was really good, sums it up. Nobody really cares. The Kindness of Strangers others that. It’s the basis of most religions. We are what we give. Not in the hope of receiving, or as a morality play (although that may be part of that thing we call being truly human) or even the anguished cry of Marlon...

Elvis v Priscilla. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002nzws/elvis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvis_(2022_film) https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002b8kn/priscilla https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_(film) Music and me, we don’t talk or do that walk. If the slim-hipped whip of a boy is someone the old dears in The Mountblow watch doing Karaoke turns out to be a bulky and grey haired John Brady, they never let on. I guess mums...

Dr Tony Redmond (2021) Frontline. Saving Lives in War, Disaster and Disease Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo (1939) Andrea: “Unhappy the land that has no heroes.” Galileo: “No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.” Dr Tony Redmond is no fictional hero. But we kind of already know him. Born into poverty. A man that wants to help others—no matter what or where they are. He’s paid the price. Almost a millimetre from total paralysis, the discs in his...

Julian Hoffman is trying to find a place in our ponderous world for wonder, or what he terms ‘radical amazement’. The beauty of connection in the age of desolation. ‘When it’s gone, it’s gone,’ he argues. He asks what are those special qualities that make us human? Our sixth sense, writer Rebecca Solnit calls it. Cultural as well as natural meaning. Lived experiences that act as in internal compass mapped by memory and spatial awareness. I think...

In Northern Gaza’s Tal Al-Zatar, hungry stray cats wander war-torn streets. They seach for food among the debris and for the young boy who always cared for them. They stumble upon his charred remains, a life gone astray. Mohammed Moussa, The Face Before You: To Write Poetry on Genocide. Notes. ‘Listen to yourself,’ wasn’t some piece of New Age advice when we were younger. A whack on the lug was the remedy. My wee brother, Bod wasn’t one to...

Buried. With the remains of my first child in my arms, I journey barefoot, fragile as a newborn, breathing in the tears of premature farewells. He is light as a feather, but impossibly heavy. Upon arrival I’m greeted by my family, friends, acquaintances, strangers, they all feel closer and further away from me than ever. Our grief finds little solace in embraces, our damaged souls gnaw at our hearts and bodies they stain out evenings. Our grief...

Some might think that inflicting the moron’s moron, Donald J.Trump, on an innocent world is payback for the Holocaust of the Highland clearances. But Scottish historian T.M.Devine takes a more nuanced view. He studies what records are available to differentiate between what happened in the Highlands and Island and compare it with Lowland Scotland. A History of the Dispossessed answers some questions, but reveals others. Devine follows...

I hadn’t heard of Scottish novelist Ewan Morrison, which is perhaps unusual because I read lots and he’s won lots of awards. And I kinda pride myself on knowing the Scottish literary scene. He’s a great writer. But this book almost failed the ten-page test. Beginnings. My Survival Guide. ‘I’m still alive, and if you’re reading this that means you’re all alive too. That’s something. My name is Haley Cooper Crows and I’m in lockdown in a remote...