celticman's blog

I went to Dalmuir library yesterday and got three books. Two by Des Dillon and one by Jeff Torrington. Ewan had mentioned Torrington in one of his posts. Although I know I’ve read his book, Swing Hammer Swing , like most books I read I can’t remember anything about it. Nothing. Well, the bit about it being set in Glasgow. Since hearing Des Dillon speak at Dalmuir library I thought he’s one of us and I better read something he wrote. When I got...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/born-on-the-same-day 7 th March 1944, three babies are born in different parts of the world, the Second World War is just finishing and there’s a population boom as the soldiers come back from the front. The format is familiar. Granada broadcast the original 7UP documentary series in what was meant to be a one off, World in Action programme, in 1964, directed by Michael Apsted. 7UP was meant to tell us...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/thriller-in-manila/episode-guide Director and script editor John Dower takes us back to 1975, The Thriller in Manila, the fight of the century and the last of the three bruising encounters between Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier. Score card, one win each. Note the running order of syntax in most guides. Muhammed Ali comes first. Then Smoking Joe Frazier. One an iconic image, perhaps second to Nelson Mandela in the...

How Late it Was, How Late won the Booker Prize on its publication in 1994. It was a controversial verdict. Rabbi Julia Neauberger one of the judges is quoted as saying, ‘Frankly, it’s crap’ and threatened to resign from the panel if it won. Written in Glasgow dialect and telling the story of Sammy who did a bit of stealing, did a bit of time and has become blind after taking a hammering from the cops that arrest him, I don’t think it’s crap, but...

It’s great to see the football back on telly. The best part is it’s on normal telly and you don’t need a special box or to pay a subscription because then I just wouldn’t bother. That’s a bit of a shame because I watched almost every match in the Euros and World Cup since Scotland humbled Brazil in 1974, never lost a game in the tournament and still got sent home to think again. 1978 was good as well. Mario Kempes sticks in the mind. Argentina...

‘Writing makes me feel I was really living.’ There’s irony in when Erwin James writes that he’s a Category-A prisoner and banged up for killing two people. He doesn’t dwell on that. No excuses of how it was a robbery that went wrong –twice- and turned a thief and his mates into murderers. I’m not usually criminal, although sense of humour border on it, but I also write to make sense of the world and there is a lot of Ewin James I recognise in...

Today Maria Sharapova, the winner of five grand-slam tennis tournaments, received a two -year ban for failing a drugs test. It’s an old story, from hero to villain quicker than Honk Kong Phooey could do a karate chop. And he really was a super guy. What do I know about cycling? Not a lot. If I cycle along the cycle path to Clydebank, which is about a mile, I expect people to stand aside and applaud as I pass and to hold out bottles of water (or...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03j49l6/storyville-20132014-12-blackfish-the-whale-that-killed We all know the story of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick . Man versus whale and neither wins. Score draw on the coupon. I’ve started the books a few times and never got beyond the first pages. Wooden ships used to go away for a year or more and come back loaded down with whale blubber and oil. Prototype factory ships. Boiled down whale oil...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b075f78j/tim-rhysevans-all-in-the-mind?suggid=b075f78j I must admit I hadn’t a scooby who Tim Rhys-Evans is. I find out here he’s the auteur of a male voice choir, Only Men Aloud, which won a competition called Last Choir Standing, which led to sell out concerts and record gigs and an MBE from the Queen. None of these things interest me. What interests me is Rhys-Evans’s admission that he’s got a mental...

Norway is one of the richest places in the world. Its citizens are well catered for. Hence Karl Ove can bounce from the Writer’s Academy, where he gets a bit of paper, a certificate, saying he’s a writer, to work in a radio station when he’s called up and claims he can’t serve because he’s a conscientious objector, to another course studying Fine Art. That takes him from around aged 19 until he’s 26. By the time this instalment is finished he’s...