Blogs

Directed by Tom Hooper and an Oscar winning screenplay by David Seidler this is a story about a man that stammers and how he was ‘cured’ by the unorthodox Australian speech therapist, Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush. I won’t be given too much away if I tell you that the chronic stammerer in question played by Colin Firth goes on to become King George VI. His father’s death and his brother’s marriage to Wallis Simpson puts him on the throne...

It's been a long day of sleeping, playing, eating, fluting, writing, posting, page refreshing, texting, commenting, tweeting, more page refreshing. It's been a long day. But it has been productive. My mom is fostering a dog right now. We already have three. This dog, apparently has "challenges." (He's a very strong, forceful dog) this dog is a pain in my butt, but his little face is just so cute. My other dog has been feeling rejected so I've...

Turn off Winter- turn on Spring. More light-more energy. More sun-more warmth and delight in nature. More love of life. Getting used to the longer days and more light. Can't hide anymore so the light streams into all the nooks and crannies of the mind through my eyes- so keep them open a lot. Don't want to hide so much anymore. Goodbye Winter depression. Hello I'm still alive..

Over the past two weeks I’ve been writing a series of short stories about running, six so far with another idea scribbled down in my notepad. I don’t know whether it’s because I’ve had to dig deep to find so many stories on the same theme, or simply because of the special relationship I have with running, but the inspiration for many of the stories comes from way back. My story about a presidential guard charged with protecting him during his...

I didn’t go for a run over the rest of the bank holiday, as I developed a cold. I am, let me repeat, a fair weather runner. Though I’ve run pretty regularly my entire adult life, but I do not run if it’s raining, in the snow, in the ice, or if I have a cold. My running is affected before I’ve any idea I’ve a cold coming on, it’s the first symptom. As you can see from my previous blog, I found the run a struggle, I was stiff, uncomfortable and my...

A fortnight's break from running because of the snow. Mrs Oblong comments that I write about running more often than I do it. Whilst this is true (a couple of running-based short stories this week) it's not exactly fair. My body is stiff and the wind is icy cold, I struggle to find the inspiration and can't get beyond a slow trudge. I feel my age. Not just the body feeling crap and frail, but some unstoppable part of my brain wants to complain...

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...