celticman's blog

This book is a delight to read. I’m not really sure why, I guess it’s because the author is honest. No waffle. He doesn’t believe in dyslexia even though he and his son have been given that moniker by earnest professionals. Early in life he wanted to be an artist, and went to among others, the Slade Art School in London. It’s not so much as he pissed the chance away, he realised early that he didn’t have what it takes. He was at the first Sex...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0991fsb/louis-theroux-dark-states-1-heroin-town There’s a funereal feel to most things Louis Theroux is in. He’s like the Stephen King of documentaries and with a title like Dark State – Heroin Town you expect the residents to rise up from their crypt and stab you with a used syringe and make you part of the problem. The fortunate thing about Louis is he’s already undead. He’s like the actor that plays Steve...

I got to page 41 of this book, Chapter 6. You might get further. I had a quick look because the author Laura Lam is coming to do a reading in Duntocher Library soon. Shattered Minds is a dystopian novel set in the near future. The setting is San Francisco, California, Pacifica. I guess that’s the place Laura Lam grew up, but there’s no such place as Pacifica. That’s a hint. The world is not as it seems. Near the Pacific, but no longer in broken...

I heard about this book in a kind of roundabout way. Richard Holloway had given a reading at Dalmuir Library and this was one of the books he said he re-read every few years. Well, that was good enough for me. I finally got around to reading The Last of the Just and was not disappointed. Where is God? That is the question this book asks. In the final chapter, the narrator of the biography of Ernie Levy, the last of the just men, is in a sealed...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b096k8wz/the-vietnam-war-series-1-1-deja-vu-18581961 Déjà vu 1858-1961 The Vietnam War, in ten parts, is the best thing on television. Déjà vu seems quite apt, with the United States divided in a way not seen since those for and against the War and those that voted for the moron’s moron as President and those that hate everything he stands for. I’m not a citizen of the United States, but I’m in the latter...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b097bkcy/child-in-mind?suggid=b097... I watched Men Who Sleep in Cars a drama, in verse, linking the lives of three men who, you’ve guessed it, sleep in cars, but one of them cheats, because he has the luxury of a Ford Transit van. It was OKish. I didn’t really intend to watch Child in Mind , with poetry by Simon Armitrage, I’ve got stacks of things to do, and by that I mean, read. I write too and sometimes...

Celtic 2— 2 Hibernian This was Neil Lennon’s return to Paradise, the former manager and Celtic player’s summation of the game and Hib’s performance was absolutely right. ‘We didn’t take a step back the whole game. It was an outstanding team performance. A draw was probably a fair result but we are disappointed not to win.’ Brendan Rodgers got a bit of dig in about the pitch (no pun intended) a message to the Celtic board, and how ‘it was always...

Scott Sinclair’s goal in the ninety-third minute to put Celtic three up put the sheen on a fine team performance and, more or less, guarantees Celtic third spot in the group table and a Europa League spot. European football after Christmas is not something we’re used to and after getting hammered by PSG the doom-mongers (let’s call them Ranger’s supporters) were predicting, once again, zero points in the group stage and an embarrassment to...

I, Daniel Blake is one of those films everybody thinks I should see. A typical conversation, or text message, goes something like this, sorry you missed the screening, you’d have loved it and the discussion afterwards in Dalmuir library. It’s one of those films I already know the story. Some old guy meets up with some young girl who has kids. They’re on the buroo and they get shat on from a great height because they’re poor and working class and...

I liked this book, it’s about us, the working class often portrayed standing outside history books adding a bit of colour to the stories of kings and governors, quietly happy to die for their country, or the working class portrayed as a Lemuel Gulliver lying down in the long grass and falling asleep and being tied down by Lilliputians who make theatrical speeches he doesn’t understand but he does what the little men, the 1% of the population...