Blogs

Once a month, usually on the first or second Saturday, I depart the ancestral battlements and make the twenty-five minute train journey to Malton, perhaps the epitome of a North Yorkshire market town. From September to July it’s a quiet journey, with plenty of seats available. From July to September it’s the sardine express, because the eventual destination is Scarborough. There are still many people who choose not to drive to the seaside, and...

In my smug way I thought I’d read Morvern Caller before and been unimpressed. I vaguely remembered a film of Alan Warner's book starring Ewan McGregor. I was reading an interview director Lynne Ramsay gave to The Observer. I had another look at the book and realised I hadn’t read it, there was no film with Ewan or any other McGregor and I loved it’s in your face style. It’s the kind of people I know. Quite simply, Morvern Caller talks like us...

'I like three things," announces Pietro, a bear of a man with two metal lower lip piercings framed by a lush black beard, "snow, dogs and building things." We are at a husky camp 60 degrees latitude within the arctic circle, on a bitterly cold St. Valentines day. The camp is a cacophony of yelps, barks and howls, "When you enter, don't run, just let them come up and introduce themselves," says Pietro. He's hard to hear over the din. He opens the...

Well our central heating broke down early Thursday morning after two days of temperatures about -5 degrees C. The temperature in the house was about 13 degrees... reminded me of the olden days when we had no central heating. The condensate pipe had frozen. It's a pipe from the boiler which is routed outside the house. It takes the excess water from the boiler in a slow trickle. It's easy to thaw out with a couple of kettles of boiling water...

Story and Poem for the month of February very kindly chosen by Holly (accidentallyexisting): I enjoy reading so many of the pieces on ABC tales and I always find it so hard to choose. I was particularly piqued by this poem by well wisher. It is a poignant statement on the attitudes of gun sympathisers. That's why this is my Poem of the Month. https://www.abctales.com/ story/well-wisher/more-guns I also enjoyed Ewan’s poem. It has the quiet air...

This is quite a simple book to read. There is no unreliable narrator to worry about. Time behaves predictably in a linear fashion and begins in 1945 with Mrs Goggins and ends with Mrs Goggins in a ‘New Ireland’ in 2015 getting married for the first time. In between the reader follows Cyril Avery’s life in seven year chunks for 588 pages that takes him into exile in Amsterdam and later New York. Ah, you might think, how can Mrs Goggins be Mrs...

Another embarrassment of riches to choose from this week! Story of the Week is Noo's funny, observant and thought provoking 'Every Picture': https://www.abctales.com/story/noo/every-picture Poem of the Week is jackory's lyrical and moving 'Gently Into The Dream': https://www.abctales.com/story/jackory/gently-dream I fell in love with both of these pieces when I read them - hope you will too, if you haven't done so already. This week's...

I’m sure I’ve got a Scottish identity. You might have one too. I wasn’t looking for mine, but here it is. We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns. It doesn’t lie in that ear squeal we hear on every channel when counting down to New Year. Or the cheuctering twirling plaid and stripping the willow. Or the Scottish and Rye of The Still Game. These to me are fanny water. Listen instead to Anton Chekhov in A Dreary Story which sounds to me very Scottish, and...

Brilliant even in translation, Bolano's tale of wandering delinquent Mexican and Chilean poets is life-based writing The two lead actors in the drama are Arturo a 'more extrovert version of Roberto'and his mate Ulisses. It's nonstop, wide canvas, multiple narrative. Women sometimes take the stage, suffer worse consequences from their rambling life and some emerge alive. The road ahead, the hasty vivid glance behind... Jack Kerouac the famous-man...