Blogs

I stood up and cheered when we got drawn with Rangers in the League Cup. We’ve not played them for three years. We want to rub their noses in it. We’ve missed it (but only if we win). Chris Sutton is getting some stick for saying what many Rangers’ fans believe: Celtic could win playing with their men blindfolded. That’s true. We’ve got the best young players in Scotland. And in Liam Henderson we have the most exciting talent since Ian Durrant (...

Finding a poem this week was quite hard because the quality of submissions was even more outstanding than usual. I think maggyvaneijck is the rightful winner though, with the multi-layered Blue. Definitely one to read again and again. For the Story of the Week you're getting three for the price of one! Noo's trio of wonderful shorts, each with an unlikely ending - and they were so good, I am nicking the title and theme for this week's...

This book is outdated. It was published before the crash and unravelling of high finance in 2008, but the bounce back of the increasingly wealthy has been so spectacular and complete it’s as if that event never happened. A more major shortcoming is Frank’s believe in the benefits of trickle-down economics. It’s worth repeating wealth flows at an increasing speed upwards and if the rising tide has lifted fewer boats during the Obama years, as one...

Make sure you visit ABCtales on Saturday when we'll be announcing the details of our fantastic new competition!

I’ve never heard of William Kowalski and I’m pretty sure he’ll never have heard of me. I followed this link http://williamkowalski.com/wp-content/themes/shoelace/ebooks/Writing_For... He gives advice for first-time novelists. You should follow it too. If something can make you laugh then its half way to being genius. Here it’s when his mentor, Jack Kunickzak, explained to a young Kowalski that while his shipmates went shipside to watch the...

The BBC commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, 70 years ago, the site of almost one million murdered, but also a symbol of the six million other Jews killed and hundreds of thousands others killed in a genocidal purge of the pure Aryan-Nazi race that took place in a ring of hundreds of other camps. As a Catholic the service itself was one I was familiar with. The solemn intonation, readings from extracts of Primo Levi, If This is a Man ...

How many times have you been told NO just to go back umpteens times to work and perfect that YES! Umpteen times?Anyway, as much as the "never give up speech" is all inspiring and crucial, if we're being honest with ourselves ,it's a further dissappointment to hear! Am I right? I'll speak for myself then,it is. It reminds me of the long long longggg journey ahead of me. I know it. I understand it. I just don't want to hear you say it...,maybe...

'They're just a bunch of trees.' Wrong! Woods can tip us topsy-turvey, grannies become wolves, witches jump out at us stealing babies to imprison for life because they can't let go, giants quake the ground. There are love-rat princes, weird magic beans and worst of all we can lose the path. Lost in the woods! Stephen Sondheim's clever musical travels well to the screen.Several fairy tales are meshed together in a singing, running, suspenseful...

It’s difficult to summarise a book that spans over 300 years, rich with knowledge and learning, which runs to over 600 pages. But it’s really quite simple. He who own the land owns the people. The Highland Clearances are an example of this. But Devine notes the Scots were always a nation on the move. Only Ireland and Norway have exported more of its people. But neither of these nations have done as well as the expatriate Scot abroad. Start...

The time was 1970. The place, my backyard. The 1970′s was a great time for a child growing up. It seemed like parents were a lot more relaxed about where we went, what we did, and who our friends were. We had the run of the neighborhood, and were the lords of our block. After dinner, we came home when the street lights came on, and never wasted one sunny day inside. Are you kidding me? There was too much to do! Riding our bikes, meeting friends...