Blogs

Filed by Fletcher Moody — Literary Correspondent In the fall of 1968 I set out to interview Wilma Dykeman, and the animals of the mountains would not let me arrive. She was the reason for the trip and I should say who she was, because she has never been as famous as the country she wrote about deserved. Thirteen years before, she had published The French Broad , a book that took a river and its whole watershed and the people strung along it and...

BPL had tried in vain to find a suitable caravan to go off in with Bus Pass. The simple fact of the matter was that most caravans required a car in order to go off in them, not a bus. Local stationary caravans, BPL’s third-worst nightmare holiday*, were only for sale, and for £39,995. (BPL had a conniption, her first flat hadn’t cost that, nor her second flat either.) BPL fancied sleeping under the stars though, and found a lovely politically-...

Went to see ‘Practical Magic’ retrospective. Was it really 1998? Yet, I haven’t aged a day. Seeing that kitchen on the big screen again. Gorgeous. Top movie house, ‘Practical Magic’ house. Second, Kate Winslet’s cottage in ‘The Holiday’. Close third, any movie set Nancy Myers creates. Very excited. (In my defence, ever since the partial eclipse, have just wanted August to end). Fancy seeing several ‘coming attractions’ at the flix this Autumn. ‘...

Am of the opinion that British Bloke Siri (BBS) is a Virgo. If you happen to swear when frustrated that BBS has gone off on some tangent not remotely connected to what you just asked, BBS says ‘I don’t respond to that’. Defence rests. I rarely ask Siri anything. I don’t like its attitude, like it wants to tut and sigh before answering. In satisfyingly time-wasting manner, MacBook Neo has additional Siri accents; Australian, American, South...

After a successful day out, circumnavigating roadworks in a satisfying, remembrance-of-commutes-past move, Crankus , the carb demon*, in congratulatory mood, whispered, ‘Afterall, a cheese scone isn’t a cake’. It was in this easily-led frame of carboholic-mind that a homeward bound stop at Newton Dee for candles and chocolate (always allowed), became coffee, cheese scone and a life lesson. Driving a circular route I haven’t used in years, and...

Sean McNulty’s Excavatum has been described at the haunted twin of The Odyssey but without the $250 million budget. Half of which was spent on marketing. Indeed, the cover for Excavatum, A Northern Folk Story, 1953 looks like a child’s drawing of a fishing boat, with three faceless dark figures and at the pointy bit of the boat, beyond the cabin, another faceless figure looking out to whiteness of the borders and the blue surrounds. Some might...

MacBook Neo arrived, all citrus green and lickable. Had pre-emptively bought the new USB-C power adaptor when I was swithering about upgrading iPhone7, no new Apple tech ships with USB-C power adaptors. What a ripoff. Neo arrives fully charged though, and starts itself up when you open the lid. Got three months free of Apple TV and Music, not interested in the three months of games. I have experiments to be getting on with. Am currently playing...

For many readers the term The Body Keeps the Score has become a truism. Something that sounds kinda true, but you don’t really know why or who said it. It’s routinely rolled out in debates and conversations about mental health and in particular PTSD. But really it applies to those lives that have been struck by tragedy and trauma. Unfortunately this includes a large group of children. Those hundreds of thousands of children in Palestine, for...

TG Reid Blood Water Falls setting is the Highlands. The cover describes it as ‘A DCI Bone Scottish Crime Thriller’. I’ve not read other of Reid’s series of books featuring DCI Bone. But as a standalone book—‘You can’t drown the dead’—that should be unnecessary. But Reid and DCI Bone didn’t work for me. I read around the first 30 pages. Over a million copies of this book sold? Perhaps I should add an exclamation mark! Richard Jones, a geography...