celticman's blog

Cloudstreet , Tim Winton’s homage to his homeland in Perth Australia has been kicking about for a few years. Winton wrote an afterword in 2015. Sometime you find a book and sometimes a book finds you. The novel I’m rewriting has many of the features of Cloudstreet . If it ever hits the light of day…well, we’ll see. I’m not really sure who the narrator of Cloudsteet is and being a pretend writer I’m usually pretty good at hiding that kind of...

The story behind the story of Sugar Money seems the usual hokum of a neighbour digging out an unpublished manuscript which turns out to be the extraordinary story of Lucien, a ten-year old slave boy. How he and his elder brother Emile, in a few weeks in December 1765, got involved in a remarkable attempt to liberate slaves from slavery and bring them back into, em, slavery. Read the title again and you’ll understand – money. When money is...

To my niece Willow, I was born on the 10 th December 1962. Fifty-five years ago not only was my mum Jean alive, but she had given birth and was nursing me back to health somewhere in darkest Braeholm, Helensburgh. I wasn’t expected to live. I don’t remember the reasons why. Yeh, we showed them mum. What we showed them I’m not really sure. I’m nearer death than birth now. Life is the miracle. And I’m not likely to forget you birthday, Willow. It’...

The last Old Firm game of the year and Rangers take a point and could have taken more, but from some crucial saves from Craig Gordon. Ranger’s keeper Wes Foderingham also blocked well, early on, from Moussa Dembele. His save from James Forest was superb. And Scott Sinclair hit him with the ball twice and contrived to miss, just before half time from six yards. A first half that Celtic dominated, after a shaky start, in which Rangers had the...

Bernard MacLaverty short story collections begins in 1977 with Secrets and ends with his fifth collection in 2006 with Matters of Life & Death . I read one or two of his short stories a day, in no particular hurry. An uneven bunch. I’m looking at the contents page. Some stories stick in the mind more than others. Perhaps that has more to do with the more recently read story. I re-read the introduction, MacLaverty taking a look back at his...

(Shit. I’d a whole spiel in my head about this being the tricky second novel, after the great debut novel and international success of The Cutting Room . But when I checked publication date, it was Louise Welsh’s fifth novel. Not her second. Anyway, I was going to fling in Swing Hammer Swing , Jeff Torrington’s debut novel and his follow up novel The Devil’s Carousel . I raved about the first and emm, didn’t rave about the second. I’d segue away...

Love is Strange (2014) written and directed by Ira Sachs, Film 4, 11.15 pm. Love is Strange , but so are my sleeping habits. I stayed up until 1a.m., watching this. Believe me, I need my beauty sleep and so do these old codgers, George (Alfred Molina) and Ben (John Lithgow). Ben is 73. We know that because later in the film he blacks out and falls down some stairs of the New York, brown-stone apartment he lives in while coming down from the...

Celtic’s domestic unbeaten run of 69 games, almost two years unbeaten, comes to a halt at Tynecastle. Celtic have had off days before and contrived to win. Here, all over the pitch, Celtic’s passing game came unstuck as Hearts pressed high up the pitch. Celtic players slipped and slid and seemed unable to make a pass. Heart’s players were first to the fifty-fifty balls. Craig Gordon hesitated and looked uncertain. He almost lost an early goal,...

Nobody that's a nobody ever asks what are you writing? There’s no reason to think I’m writing anything. But if that nobody ever did ask I’ve got a ready-mix answer. I’m writing about us, and I’m trying to get it right. Elena Ferrante writes again and again about Naples. Its crude dialect and its even cruder people who are not to be trusted, even among themselves, especially by themselves. Here are some crude notes about this novel and its place...

http://www.chrisleslie.com/portfolios/red-road-underground/ As part of Book Scotland I went to talk Chris Leslie gave in Clydebank library. He overran a wee bit but I could have listened to him all night. Disappearing Glasgow is about us. Glasgow’s full of ghosts, one of the punters in his book says. And they’ve all got the same refrain – that used to be my house. I always presumed the Red Road flats would last forever, but when you see it now...