celticman's blog

‘There was people waiting, families waiting to be evacuated…’ ‘I’m not sure how long we were away, although the house was damaged it was habitable…so we were in the back room with the windows boarded up because all the glass in the house was shattered, the blast had blown out all the windows…It was quite cosy. We had to cook on the fire.’ ‘I stood outside the burnt shell of what was my home with my children, all we had was what we stood in… how...

As a story teller, with Leicester City at the top of the Premier League it’s been the year of the underdog, and I’ve been following the Iain Duncan Smith, or the IDS narrative, with interest. He resigned from the Cabinet because ‘I am unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that are more and more perceived as distinctly political rather than in the national interest…[I]...

Alone in Berlin is full of cartoon characters! And exclamation marks! And the third-person omniscient narrator who sees all and feels all, on behalf of his audience, suddenly comes clean about his omnipotent powers and directly addresses the reader and insists on a happy ending! Fuck that! But as we fall back into history and look at Boris Johnson and George Osborne vying with each other to think of new ways to beat the poor down and, on the...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07472y8 This is a programme about domestic violence. Violence against women. It follows Thames Valley’s domestic abuse unit, over a twelve month period, as its police officers go about the business of support Jemma, Helen and Sabrina and gaining a conviction against their attackers. The evidence seems straightforward. Helen’s dad, Russell, puts it this way, ‘I feel gutted. You never know what happens behind...

I am not a pilgrim. I am pillock. I read 84 pages, or section one, of 700 pages. I didn’t stick with it to find out how former FBI agent Jude Garret published in-house, as a front for the FBI, a book that he didn’t expect anyone to read about forensics; how this related to the pathology of crime and how what goes around comes around. A feeling I know well. But guess what? On page one, someone has read that book by Jude Garret, and it’s a woman...

I was up at my sister Phyllis’s house 13 th March 1996. That’s twenty years ago. I was a young thirty-three with a full head of hair and a ready laugh, now I’m a baldy, miserable old cunt, so nothings really changed, but I remember that day because it was Dunblane. News coverage was running on loop, but it was the same picture of parents rushing towards the school, knowing like us that something terrible had happened. I’m not an emotional guy. I...

Anne Rice, as most people know, is a novelist. Her bestselling work includes her first novel, Interview with the Vampire . This is the only novel of hers which I've read. It made her who she is. Gave her financial freedom. The blurb on the cover tells the reader that she has written twenty-eight novels. I've a dim memory of trying to read another one of these, but quickly put it down. I could run my finger down the list, but honestly I wouldn't...

This is a triptych of father, mother, son and ghosts of life. And his parents die in that order. Father, Bill, first, unexpectedly of a heart attack not long after retiring from banking. Then mother, Julie, unravelled by strokes until there was nothing left. This is where the story begins and ends, because it allows John, their only son to bind himself closer, and find out more about their earlier life. His life too comes under scrutiny, but it...

I like to give Scottish authors a chance. I read an extract by Amy Liptrot in The Observer ( http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/17/amy-liptrot-i-am-a-lone-figure-in-waterproofs-the-outrun-extract ) and bought the book because I liked it. Sometimes life is that simple. What I like about it is it’s honesty. When I read Sooz’s diaries online (Harpie in ebooks) I often laugh. Yes, I’m a cruel vindictive person that revels in other folk’s...

I’m going to start boasting now. So if you’re the type that turns off the computer when someone posts a Facebook picture of their dinner or their cat or both – look away now. I got an O’Grade in something when I was younger. Yeh, hard to believe, but it was in economics. I found it quite simple. If something wasn’t a problem of supply then it was a problem of demand. Multiple choice A or B. Fifty-fifty chance of being one or the other. I might...