Blogs

Have reached the age of invitations, flu jabs, mammograms, and when playing ‘poo sticks’ means a bowel test. Am delighted to be invited, although they tend to lack champagne and never have enough balloons. Remembering the party season when I was a teenager, there seemed to be an invitation every weekend. Mostly Venture Scout discos. Cold, starry nights. Wearing jeans that hadn’t quite dried properly, your mum screaming after you about getting...

The dumb supper is older than the version most people meet today, and its original purpose was almost the opposite. "Dumb" here means mute. In the British Isles and rural America, Halloween was once prime time for love divination, and the dumb supper was the most elaborate of those rituals -- a meal conducted in complete silence by young women hoping to glimpse the man they would marry. The folklorist Wayland D. Hand traced it back to an English...

70 UP, STV iPlayer, ITV iPlayer, Directed by Asif Kapadia. https://www.stv.tv/entertainment/series/70-up/ (stv.tv in Bing) ITVX (ITV Hub) — 70 Up https://www.itv.com/watch/70-up/2a1234 (itv.com in Bing) I watched the penultimate episode of 70 UP. I’ve watched every other episode apart from 63 UP as I couldn’t access it. So it was great to catch up. The Jesuits borrowed the idea: ‘Give me a child until he is seven, and I will show you the man.’ 7...

I’m smart enough to know I don’t know anything much worth knowing about poetry in particular. In ‘Introduction to Poetry’ in Amnest Gwilym’s latest collection, she offers some sage advice that had me thinking back to all those creative writing tutors inviting you—ever so nicely—to interrogate your work: ‘But all you want to do is place my poem in a birdcage, force it to sing its song, You start by starving it to find out what it means.’ I’m...

If I hadn’t stopped scrolling, would not have discovered ‘Olive Ketteridge’; character in Elizabeth Strout’s eponymous book. Am late to the party; it won the Pulitzer 2009. Doubt I would have ‘got’ it back then as was still working and in spiral of cortisol, fatigue and shopping. Would have found it unbearable. Didn’t have the psychological wherewithal to cope with a book about getting old, the clarity and messiness of late-life’s joys, fears...

Went to Sainsbury’s mid-week instead of Saturday. Not sure why was going on a Saturday, there must have been a reason, anyway, went on Wednesday instead; it was a lot emptier. Except the shelves which were fully stacked. Lesson learned. On the way, decided to pay the £3.60 for ‘up to two hours’ extortion in Aberdeen city car park to make a stop at ‘the sisters’ shop’ and see if there was a cheap, yet charming, laptop cover. ‘The sisters’ shop’...

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent A reader named Katharine wrote to ask me two things. The first was whether I would go and see a fishing captain named Ellery Thompson, out of Stonington, Connecticut, a draggerman who paints. The second was whether I am a vampire. I will take them in order, and I will do a better job with the first, because the first has an answer. I went up to Stonington to find the captain, and found instead...

Making new friends can be difficult at any age. Have joined various arty or writing sessions over the years in the hope of meeting like-minded people. Instead, found the solace I craved in coming home to peace and quiet. Fifties; classes were populated by bickering menopausal women, and we all hated being there, waiting our turn, and each other. Sixties; joined a walking group for retired people. Fresh air and an easy pace. However, there was...

Douglas Sturt understands how fragile memories and language are and how they can be torn away from a sense of self. There’s no place for his Booker Prize winning debut novel, Shuggie Bain or his international bestseller, Young Murdo on library shelves for books in places like Texas that ban and burn books. His protagonists are always working-class boys going to be fucked over or just fucked for being different, for being gay. If not by others,...