celticman's blog

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...

Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence It’s been over two decades since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence , which coincided with a spike in populism and hatred of others centred around the divisive figure of Donald J. Trump around a decade ago. Emotional Intelligence is empathy at work, which has never worked for Trump. Emotional self-awareness is a misnomer. At the memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whom...

Edna O’Brien claimed The Country Girls wrote itself. The best books often do. Indeed it’s a marvel and she is a marvellous writer. It’s easy to make the mistake of confusing her with Caithleen (Cait) Brady. The teenage protagonist growing into womanhood in rural, 1950s Tuamgraney, East Clare, and later Dublin, with a little help from her frenemy Baba Brennan. Write what you know. O’Brien/Cait knows the in and outs of every field and path through...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-unlikely-pilgrimage-of-harold-fry Jim Broadbent usually plays somebody’s dad. Here he’s Harold Fry. Solid. Dependable. Middle-class and retired. In one of those long-standing relationships. Husband and his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton) have signed a grief-fire. Both are retired, standoffish and stuck in their middle-class home getting further and further from each other and fading into the wallpaper. A...

BBC Radio Wales, BBC Sounds, Secrets of the Salt Path. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0n5p4w5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0n7b8j7 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj32vx61x6lo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c80p2pzgpmgo In films and television drama writers are one dimensional. Invariably, they are portrayed as some tortured soul that knocks off an international bestseller. It happens. Irvine Welsh is the poster boy...