celticman's blog

The kids are back at school. You know what that means, the school run, clogged streets and roads. Banners hung outside school gates warning parents that ‘Parking here is dangerous and selfish’, but some park there anyway, because it doesn’t apply to them, they’ll just be a minute and the people that are dangerous and selfish are the ones without cars, because their poor wee Daren might get wet and catch cold. My response isn’t two fingers in a V...

https://authorsinterviews.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/here-is-my-interview-... I can't claim any great credit here. Talking about yourself is easy. Talking about someone else, now that's a hard one.

Peter May is one of those authors I kept meaning to read. But like everybody else I’ve got a stack of books waiting and no time to read them. I’m glad I found the time. He’s good. He’s very good and the characters he creates swagger out of the page and into your life, so you care about them and what happens to them. The characters that stand out most are the Scottish islands, such as Lewis, Harris, Uist and Barra. The islanders on the windswept...

It would be unfair to suggest I read Positive Intelligence with an open mind, or even read it, rather I flipped through it. I did read today’s report in The Observer by Harriet Sherwood, the headline of which is Top cleric says C of E reforms risk making it a ‘suburban sect’. How does that apply to Shirzad Chamine’s New York Time’s bestseller? Well, I’d argue that Positive Intelligence (PQ) which measure the percentage of your mind that is...

This is an exclusive book club. There are only two people in it, Will and his mother Mary Anne, and one of them dies. Mary Anne always read the last few pages of a book before starting the beginning. She liked to know what happened. I guess we all do. Death is the great taboo. One of the guy’s I went to school with brother was in the pub after their mum died. I told him I was sorry. Recently I asked an acquaintance I’d known about twenty years,...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07n2w8t/artsnight-series-3-12-meg-rosoff Novelist Meg Roscoff examines creativity. She’s a late bloomer, coming to the writing game, aged 47, with her debut novel, How I Live Now winning a major literary award. I haven’t read any of her work. Nor have I read the young Irish author Eimear MacBride’s A Girl is a Half Formed Thing , which won the Bailey Prize. But I do know who Anne Marie Duff is, although not...

If you are old enough you’ll remember the teacher at school leaving a star on the page of your jotter for writing. Gold, silver, yellow and red stars. Well, Amazon do the same kind of thing. You hover over the star and there’s suggestion of how much you liked or disliked a book. If you hover over the customer reviews and click you can read what reviewers thought about the book. https://www.amazhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp...

I liked Charlie Sherry’s interview with Irvine Welsh, and I talked about it with him on my mobile. I’m not a great man for phones. Boy can Charlie talk. Irvine Welsh probably never got a word in. But one thing stuck with me the last few days and it’s not the Renton quote from Trainspotting, which I’ve some sympathy with, ‘It really is shite being Scottish.’ Nor is it Welsh’s upbeat message, ‘Scots now have a positive can-do attitude which bodes...

You can see the shell of the La Scala from Second Avenue. I can’t remember the first X-rated movie I went to see there, but you can bet the fear on my face was real enough as I got to the turn at the top of the stairs and I expected the woman taking the tickes to eye me up and say, ‘Nah, son you look about fifteen’. Which would be about right, even though I did have a proper suit jacket on and open-necked collar to somehow make me look older,...

Debut novel. Lily Poole. Set in Dalmuir. (Well, actually, the house I stayed in Dickens Avenue, if we're being specific). Got a lot of support here for this novel. Have a read and tell me what you think. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp/1783522356 One reviewer said was a 'compelling read'. And he'd 'demolished it in two days.' He made a comparison. 'Opened my eyes to issues of mental health and its perceptions in the same way...