Blogs

Delighted to say that although it didn't win, my piece "Last Night I Fell in Love with My Dead Enemy" (still on ABC) was long-listed for this year's King Lear Short Story Prize . I haven't mentioned it before, but in 2021 I was one of five winners of the Time To Reflect competition held by the RIBA, and as a result in May 1922 was delighted to be artist/writer in residence at The Shard for a week.

For any of you unfamiliar with Glasgow dialect, The Old Haunts are the place you used to hang about when you were younger. Alan Radcliffe has pretty much nailed it in his debut novel. Part of the Fairlight (his publisher’s) Moderns. I’m not sure what that mean but it sounds like a good marketing gimmick. The Old Haunts speaks for itself. I’m tempted to give Alan Radcliffe the Great Scottish Writers tag I give to authors such as William...

Brian Reilly came to the door on Saturday to tell us his mum, Bel, had died. He likes to call Mary, Auntie Mary. She’s not really his aunt. But Mary’s son Alan and Robert washed through their house in Trafalgar Street, when the world was young, much the same as they washed through this house. Bel wasn’t their Auntie either. Mums knew better than God these things didn’t matter. The more Auntie Mary persisted in asking if he wanted anything, the...

“Tag, bag and bury the bastard, Garda Inspector Crowe…” Genre: Crime Fiction August - December, present day, one year after ‘A Kind of Drowning’ . The synopsis: Robert Craven's Malign Intent, is a contemporary crime thriller set in Ireland with a slow burning neo-noir atmosphere: Crowe has seen enough dead bodies in his time to suspect that Aonghus Hanafin wasn’t the hanging kind. August bank holidays should be about relaxation, taking time out...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001rjvp/us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peele If you’ve a spare two hours and don’t mind watching a zombie movie, batter in. I was intrigued. I misread the premise was something to do with doppelgangers. Strictly speaking that’s true. A black and upper-middle-class family of dad, mom and their two children go on holiday to the beach. They meet their demonic doppelgangers who come from a hole in the...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rcl0/episodes/guide https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001rckl I admit to having previous here. I listened to Danny Robbin and his team’s Podcast such as The Battersea Poltergeist , The Witch Farm and even one of his lesser known fares the Uncanny Podcast series, The Angel in the Bathroom . Danny Robbins has made the big time now he’s on prime time telly, well kinda, BBC2, but it is 9pm and that’s primetime...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-vigil?.none.none.popular || https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vigil_(2019_film) The Vigil doesn’t refer to the siege and coming ground invasion of the Gaza strip but a more simpler world when all an apostate orthodox Jew in New York, Yakov Ronen (Dave Davis), had to worry about was his eternal soul being stolen by a Mazzik . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazzikin The monster or Mazzik is eternal as all...

Referee Serdar Gözübüyük has a shocker as Scotland go down as expected in the heat of Seville. Two late goals from Rodri (73 minutes) and Sanget (87 minutes) give Spain victory. Sanget’s goal looked more like a Ryan Porteous own goal. Aaron Hickey, who had a fine game, inexplicably falling over and losing control of the ball, which just about summed up Scotland’s hopes of qualifying on the night. Ironically, Spain on Sunday, in Oslo can do it...