Blogs

This was one of those tricky fixtures. Rangers had nothing to lose. They were the underdogs that achieved a creditable draw at Parkhead in the last Old Firm fixture and around the same time last year they’d come to Hampden and won on penalties against a supposedly superior Celtic team. Fling in Celtic’s Hampden hoodoo. But if you want to talk sense and watched the game then you’ll know. Celtic were a better team that dominated the match from...

'Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Spirit three in one'. (lines from an old hymn that floated into my head when I re-read the book.) Zen and the Art is a book with a lot to it. It's a travellers' tale of a father and his young son motorbiking in the American wilds of I'm not sure where. Because long distance bikers need to fix their bikes there is also quite a bit of motorbike repair info which I would guess works Ok. Identifying the...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/born-to-kill This is the first episode of a four-part drama. I won’t be watching the other three episodes. I know the formula - a thrill at every advert break. So like Coronation Street or Emmerdale or whatever soap you watch something big is going to leave you wanting more than your cuppa and something small is left hanging during advert breaks to bring you back with a Kit Kat. Labelling theory contends that...

Posted by Philip Sidney on Fri, 21 Apr 2017 A touch of light and dark in our poem and story of the week this week. Thanks to catherine poarch for a glittering poem: https://www.abctales.com/story/catherine-poarch/only-one-song Also to Terrence Oblong for a brilliant piece of satire: https://www.abctales.com/story/terrence-oblong/civil-war The media circus comes to town again in the run-up to the June elections - so our inspiration point for this...

A touch of light and dark in our poem and story of the week this week. Thanks to catherine poarch for a glittering poem: https://www.abctales.com/story/catherine-poarch/only-one-song Also to Terrence Oblong for a brilliant piece of satire: https://www.abctales.com/story/terrence-oblong/civil-war The media circus comes to town again in the run-up to the June elections - so our inspiration point for this week is: circus. https://www.abctales.com/...

A lifetime of London. It must be like having a pound in your pocket and only finding fifty pence of it worth spending. I'm an ex-Londoner. Good. Iain Sinclair's anthology often strikes gold. He knows a number of older people who have bygone memories of 70s London and before. Two old Jews, members of my own lost tribe, Emanuel Litivinoff and Josef Rudolf make the spirit of the old East End walk. I also like some of the fantasy writings, the...

Ann Cleeves has written a whole stack of books. This is her 31 st . Sunday Times Bestselling author, and an imprint on the cover of the book showing some actor’s face, Douglas Fenshall, with the tag now a major BBC drama. She is everything I am not, an established author whom I’ve never heard of until West Dunbartonshire Libraries made her novel Cold Earth novel of the week. Here’s where I segue away and start talking about myself like those...

Posted by airyfairy on Fri, 14 Apr 2017 There's been some wonderful stuff on the site this week. A number of our writers have posted thought provoking, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, pieces about the terrible conflicts in our world. Lille Dante and Ewan's pieces particularly stuck in my mind, but as Poem of the Week I've gone for Philip Sidney's 'Night Flying in North Wales: https://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/night-flying-north-wales...

There's been some wonderful stuff on the site this week. A number of our writers have posted thought provoking, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, pieces about the terrible conflicts in our world. Lille Dante and Ewan's pieces particularly stuck in my mind, but as Poem of the Week I've gone for Philip Sidney's 'Night Flying in North Wales: https://www.abctales.com/story/philip-sidney/night-flying-north-wales The way this connects 'Us' and 'Them' is...

I probably shouldn't say this, but there are things about Easter that irritate me. I think it's a subject that warrants a little discussion, so bear with me. Just as an aside, that phrase 'bear with me' always makes me think of The Perishers in the Daily Mirror from years ago, where one of the characters had a bear called Gladly. It was called this because it had cross-eyes, from the hymn, 'Gladly , my cross I'd bear'. Seemed an appropriate...