Blogs

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00039vv/next-big-thing-series-1-7-my-loneliness-is-killing-me This short film won a Scottish BAFTA, which pleased me because I’d met the writer, Michael Richardson, a few times on a writing course I got turfed out of for not being able to write. Fair enough. I often go off in tangents that have no relevance. It’s not Dennis Nilsen, killing for company, and blocking the drains with body parts, or, bottle...

Our Story and Poem for March, very kindly selected by Philip Sidney: If March was a colour I’d say it was that of a fading bruise across a drab-dawn grey, smattered with pale smudges of dirty mauve, greeny-yellow and tender pink. But on ABCtales March has been gold. The deep old gold of a throaty laugh from mikesize1: https://www.abctales.com/story/mikesize1/christ-stitches and Sean Mcnulty’s: https://www.abctales.com/story/sean-mcnulty/eulogy-...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0003w40/the-murder-of-jill-dando There seems to be a plethora of anniversaries and murder reconstructions on all of the main channels. We’ve had the Bulger, The Yorkshire Ripper and Jack the Ripper recently and before that Fred and Rose West. The list goes on. Partly, I’d guess to the world-wide success of The Making of a Murderer. BBC couldn’t let the twentieth anniversary, 26 th April 1999, of one of its...

The English Law

My son told me the other day about someone getting in trouble with a knife in the playground. I was worried, but thought, well, the school will be on it, it won't happen again. Then he explained he'd only mentioned it because it was someone he knew, who had been threatend and there was a knife incident of some kind every week. At his previous school the main topics of conversation were suicide or porn, and the children at this new school are...

I don’t read a lot of young adult or children’s fiction, but for any budding writers the Costa Book of the Year 2015 is pretty much perfect. The narrator of the story, Faith Sunderlay, is at that in-between age where she’s considered neither girl nor women, on the cusp of making her Confirmation. Her father Reverend Erasmus Sunderlay is, as you’d expect with a name like that next to God, in the eyes of his family and Victorian society. Faith’s...

Celtic win 2—1 and go thirteen points clear in the Scottish Premier League with seven games remaining. Should be eight-in-a-row for the Scottish Champions. Perhaps for the first time ever Sky coverage at half-time wasn’t a beautifully worked first time pass from Calumn McGregor to Odsonnne Edouard and the goal that separated the Old Firm. The French striker still had a lot to do, with the two Ranger’s centre-halves between him and the goal, but...

My Father the Military Man

So the right honourable prime minister for the ‘couldn’t organize a pizz-up in a brewery’ party had her Brexit deal rejected for the 3 rd time… but undeterred, will probably bring it back for the 4 th time next week. And then the left honourable leader of the ‘shadow of its former self’ party declared that it was a shambolic deal and a shambolic government and a shambolic prime minister and as soon as he could remember what his party’s latest...