Blogs

Winter's Bone based an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel of the same name. I had to look that bit up on the internet. Quite simply the film has pushed to the top of my must read books. Of course I’ve got must read books and must, must read books and books I’m ashamed I’ve not read (most nineteen century novels). Written and directed by Debra Granik, the film stars Jennifer Lawrence as a seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly Jessup, in the rural...

I gave up on Scotland. I’m as patriotic as the next man, but I could only watch a bit of their game against Serbia. It was 0-0 at half time. We’ll lose. We always do. Growing up in the Gorbals is one of my favourite books. It’s a coming of age drama set in a period when even the plague rats demanded new housing. Glasser is Jewish and an outsider. Kids don’t know whether to batter him for being a Proddy or a Catholic, or just leave him alone. The...

Warwick Davis is a dwarf, so he was just the man to tell us about the Ovitzes, a Jewish family that ended up in Mengele’s zoo inside Auschwitz. As Mengele told one of the Ovitzes’s women, ‘they were lucky, because otherwise they could have ended up over there.’ Over there was a crematorium capacity of 5000 bodies a day. At one point Warwick is shown on the train tracks and a camera swoops along like a train and flies over his head into the...

I watched this DVD after watching the Scotland v Wales highlights. I didn’t know the score, so like to torture myself that way, but not enough to torture myself by watching the whole game. Highlights are enough. NEDS is not the Scottish play, but it is a Scottish film. Many folk I know have watched and commented on it because part of it was filmed in Salisbury Place. I knew this in advance because my pal Gordy Murdy works for a gangster I went...

So here we go again. It's a new scene but the same scenario. The therapist assumes many things, but does not know what the heck is wrong with my brain. I just got back from my appointment at 2 pm. I drove myself in my new car about twenty minutes to the office. I went two hours early, because I was nervous about getting lost. So I took my time buying banana bread and some oatmeal pastries and sat in the office and read for an hour. I'm reading...

I bought this book for 10p about a year ago out of my library. Somehow knowing you have a book means that you read other books in front of it. I read this in two goes: one half the first day and, well I’ll let you work out the rest (but don’t tell me your answer, I hate fractions). It’s a simple story and it’s all there in the first line. ‘I had in my care that summer four dogs, three cats, the Moran kids, Daisy my eight-year-old cousin and...

It all started when I was five years old, I woke up from the night and climbed in mummy and daddy’s bed and complained of an ear ache. Mum spoke “we will go see the doctor in the morning” so we did, they gave me ear drops and a week later I went on holiday to Spain with the family, on the plane my ears popped and I screamed “OUCH!” all my hearing went funny and a loud beeeeeeeep noise went off in my ear for at-least ten minutes, I explained this...

We bought a pup a few months ago. He's a Labradoodle. Chocolate brown. Mum was a chocolate lab and Dad was a chocloate poodle, so he's very brown! We love him to bits and we've called him Chester. He's now eight months old and a real rascal. Wouldn't have it any other way. Anyway, I digress, my wife got hold of a recipe for "Dog Cake". She takes him training every week and you have to have loads of treats for him as a reward for doing things...

The Challenger Space Shuttle exploded on 28th January 1996. All seven crew members lost their life. There was the American equivalent of a public enquiry. Brian Dennehy is an actor that looks more American than the Americans, so it was only right and proper he played the chair in the presidential commission. Ronald Reagan another wooden actor was seen in wide screen TV playing the role of President. William Hurt, that Accidental Tourist, got to...

Okay, this is a possibly the most boring idea for a blog ever. This is my running blog. And, just to be clear, I’m not one of those runners who does exciting things like triathlons and marathons all around the globe, across deserts, over oceans, through mountains. No, all I do is toddle down to the river and back a couple of times a week. Today I did my bog-standard winter run of 6k. My minimum distance used to be 4k, but that got me from my...