Blogs

We're living in a strange old world at the moment, one way and another, and our Story of the Week reflects this perfectly. Jane Hyphen's 'It's the year...' is sharply funny and surreal, and yet somehow all too believable. If you happen to know an Orca, now might be the time to start getting on the right side of it. It's the year. . . | ABCtales Our Poem of the Week takes the autumn equinox as its theme. Jennifer Skinner's haunting 'Lucid Dreams...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlv1/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-1-denial https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlv7/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-2-doubt https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlvk/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-3-delay Your children are going to die. Here’s why. ‘We must not only go to zero emissions , we must actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere ’ (italics around text are Peter Wadhams (2016) A...

1785, before the emptying of The Bastille, The Great Terror and La Guillotine will separate the heads of the aristocracy from their bodies Jean-Baptiste Baratte is given a simple task by a Minister to empty a cemetery, Les Innocents. It lies in the centre of Paris. The putrefying dead are causing such a stink it might even affect the health of the Sun King, Louis XIV at his palace in Versailles. ‘The palace is full of mirrors. Living here it...

The Washington Post called Viet Thanh Nguyen’s novel ‘a classic of war fiction’. The New York Times a ‘tour de force’. Yes and Yes. The narrator has written a confession. Looked out at the shore of himself. And decided there was nothing to see. What fuelled him wasn’t nihilism, but idealism. But that too was a lie. Something he was adept at. Being the bastard son of a priest. At fourteen, his Vietnamese peasant mother became the French father’s...

Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist and he wanted to do something about global warming. He wrote a book and finished it November 2019. Here is some advice he gives: ‘The key to writing a good book is to write a bad book and then fix it.’ I like that. The key to writing a book is firstly to finish it. Then to fix it. Holthaus managed that. He’s an optimist. ‘In 2035’, for example, he suggests, ‘global emissions finally started to sharply decline—...

If you are wondering when you can (or can't) use an image you have found on line, this is an excellent article laying it all out in simple terms. It is important, as there are legal and possible monetary consequences for the use of material in contravention of copyright laws. Anyway, take a look here. And the terms for use of the accompanying image are here [then click on view terms at bottom right].

A woman of ninety-six died. I don’t need to tell you she was old. In another life she’d have made a decent teacher of French and English, who sometimes rapped your knuckles. But we acted in concert as if it was a surprise, with the odd bum notes. My worry was that football would be cancelled and I’d miss Rangers getting stuffed for the third time in a just over a week. As a destitute person—of the no dogs, no coloured and no Irish—I’m aware rich...

Frankie Boyle is a Scottish comedian. No Mean City . Meantime. The Scottish bit suggests that there is an outside chance he might be funny. But after comedian, I need to write, allegedly. Everybody in Glasgow thinks they are a comedian. In fact, that’s often a reason for a square-go: ‘You think yer a comedian, pal?’ Everybody in Glasgow also thinks they’re a writer, including me. The proof is in the booze and also in the number of copies sold...