Blogs

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...

It was Old Pesky who put me onto John Niven. He said he was Scottish and very funny. Well, two years down the line, I took him at his word. First I read his thriller (by John J Niven) Cold Hands. There wasn’t that much laughs and in that intuitive way that you do I worked out quite early who the killer was. I mentally patted myself on the back. That kind of malarkey only works if you’re right. Otherwise you can hold your hands up and say it wiz...

I’ve got a crap memory. I kept trying to remember Offred’s real name before she became a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. I don’t know if the book told me and I forgot or the book never told me and I never forgot, but forgot not to remember. I’ve read the book before but couldn’t remember what happened. In truth nothing much happens but everything changes. Women become things. Men remain men and battle for status and power all in the name of...

Sometime I think about how people’s names suit their jobs. I used to have a writing tutor called Elizabeth Reeder. I probably spelled her name wrong, but it wasn’t her fault. Grosz would understand. He’s distilled over 50 000 hours of psychoanalytical insight into just over 200 pages. I’ve just read it in one gulp and I’m cured. I understand myself better and I understand humanity. The only difference between me and you is I’m better looking and...

The author describes this as ‘A Novel Based On A True Story.’ The true story is The Great Moonshine Conspiracy of 1935. The true story is of the great depression and Prohibition and of dirt poor farmers scrambling to get enough to eat and keep their land. The true story is of the author’s forefathers and their family: Granville Bondurant who on the death of his wife, sons and daughter in the great flu epidemic of 1919 claimed: ‘All the goodness...