Blogs

The full Halloween moon shines eerily on empty roads, devoid of trick-or-treaters or any human souls. The shadows play in fields of corn and forests filled of ancient oak trees. The veil of separation thins tonight to peek within is dare or fright. Halloween stirs the otherworldly imagination and delights with chills and thrills of fright. I cast my spell upon my home with decorations on my lawn and although this year will bring no trick-or-...

River of Fire is a book about before and after The Clydebank Blitz . Those who died in the aftermath of Luftwaffe bombing of Clydebank on Thursday 13 th March 1941 and the following night. Those who survived the bombing and fled the town. Those who stayed. Others that came through a sense of duty and solidarity to help the victims of the bombing. John MacLeod looks at the aftermath, the thousands, who did not return to Clydebank after March 1941...

I sometimes wonder if books are like bananas, after a certain time they go off and are sold at bargain-basement prices. This book was a clearance - 50p. That’s around the price you pay for books in charity shops. I got it for nothing. And no, I didn’t steal it. I just read it before the person was putting it into the charity shop dumped it. I read a good idea today about books you dislike, rather than giving it the one-star treatment and writing...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p032kjg0/play-for-today-series-10-1-just-a-boys-game ‘You’re getttin’ it McQuillan’. I’m old enough to remember this when it was first broadcast 8 th November 1979. Peter McDougall’s portrayal of working class life hit a nerve. It helped that large chunks of it were filmed in Clydebank and Drumchapel. Marathon shipyards featured. Or it might have been John Browns. We’re on the nostalgia trail. By day Jake...

Never thought of doing this before but as I have been once again ordered by the lovely Linda Wigzell Cress to get writing again, here goes. Having been active for the most part throughout my life, it came as a shock when I was told that I had Muscular Dystrophy. A muscle wasting condition which meant I was going to get weaker and weaker as my later years have proved. I knew something was wrong in my late 30's but my GP just dismissed this saying...

Kathleen Jamie (2019) Surfacing. ‘Please, are you worker, or student?’ the girl asked in polite English with Chinese accent. Kathleen Jamie, in an earlier incarnation, was asked that question. She was in eastern Amdo province, designated by China, ‘Autonomous Region of Tibet’, which means it was regarded as China. I’d heard of Amdo because of Peter Matthiessen’s classic, The Snow Leopard . I guess that makes me a student of literature. In the...

We've had some delicious pieces this week but poem of the week goes to Queen Beatle with a bone-crunching morsel: https://www.abctales.com/story/queen-beatle/falcons-regret story of the week is heart-warming take on enduring love from Ice Rivers: https://www.abctales.com/story/ice-rivers/bangers-galway-hooker here's the inspiration point: https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip

Ali Smith (2019) Spring. Ali Smith is the same age as me and was born in Inverness, Scotland (for those of you that don’t know Inverness is in Scotland—yeh, that happens). She’s an international star whose writing is lauded. The Guardian , for example, called Autumn , ‘The novel of the year’. I stuck with Spring and read it from start to finish. I found bits of it a chore and probably wouldn’t have read beyond the first ten pages, but for her...