celticman's blog

Betsy Lerner has won a stack of awards. Since the publication of her book over twenty years ago, there’s more wood, more forest, more trees. She tells us this book is not a book about how to write. Anne Lamott (1994) Bird by Bird , one of my favourites, is listed in her bibliography. Rather, Lerner’s book is about pattern recognition. How writers can’t really see what they (we or I) write, but engage in magical thinking. To ad lib William...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000jb7t/climbing-blind ‘I’m not disabled, I’m blind able,’ said Jesse Dufton, the first blind man to climb the 440- foot sea stack the Old Man of Hoy in Orkney on the 4 th June 2019. A consultant’s diagnosis that you are going to be blind is akin to a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Of all our senses, sight is the most precious. Given a choice (we don’t get a choice, it’s more like fate) I’d take the terminal...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dvdpmq/murder-in-the-pacific-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dvdqvz/murder-in-the-pacific-series-1-episode-2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dvdrpx/murder-in-the-pacific-series-1-episode-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_%281955%29 ‘One death is a tragedy, a million death is a statistic.’ A quote perhaps wrongly attributed to the Georgian, and mass murderer...

I’ve been dipping into Andrew O’Hagan’s back catalogue. Be Near Me was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006, but for me the book didn’t work. The title comes from an Alfred, Lord Tennyson poem, ‘In Memoriam, A.H.H.,’ preceding the beginning of the novel. ‘Be near me when the light is low, When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick And tingle: when the heart is sick, And all the wheels of Being slow.’ Who is it? What is it? We can expect...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001k2z5/an-irish-goodbye An Irish Goodbye is an award-winning short film. The plot is simple. An Irish mammy dies and her two boys need to arrange her funeral. Turlough, the older brother, returns from London to sell the farm and to make sure Lorcan is taken care of. He assumes his younger brother will go and live with his Auntie because he’s got Down’s syndrome. An extra chromosome doesn’t stop Lorcan...

Tweet in response to the Tory government’s stop the boats propaganda: “immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s”. The BBC back down, eventually. I’m a traditionalist, an old football-watching generation. We read the newspaper from the back pages to the front. The most important thing is my team, Celtic’s results. A Scottish team, built by Brother...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/kathy-burke-growing-up Kathy Burke and me are around the same age. We belong to the UB40 generation of Red, Red Wine and I am the 1 in 10 . Now we are the 1 in 5 growing like a cancerous cell. We belong to a vanguard army that plays a leading role in dementia and death, and most other things you’d rather not think about. Over 9 in 10 Covid deaths belonged to our age group. I didn’t vote for being old. I didn’t...

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...