celticman's blog

Darren McGarvey (2022) The Social Distance Between Us. How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain. I met Darren McGarvey a few years ago in Dalmuir Library. I’d passed him on the way in. He was having a fag outside. The library still exists, but in shortened form as part of the C.E.Centre as part of local-authority cutbacks. I bought the book he was selling, Poverty Safari . Out of sight, out of mind. I can’t remember much about it, even though it won...

Write what you know and a story within a story about a writer that doesn’t yet know she’s a writer and all that stuff nobody ever listens to because it’s all bollocks. I’ve an Irish writing friend Turlough who’s back in the auld country. He might even be following his ancient ancestor’s teapot trail from County to County and be near Tipperary ( https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/concept-rain-jaunty-angle ). Turlough’s blog, is 100 words a...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/piggy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggy_%282022_film%29 Fat is no longer just a feminist issue. My mate, Laughing Boy, is a baldy fat fuck. He’s got one of those prescriptions from the chemist for a weight-loss drug (I’ve no idea which one). I said he should give it to me. And we’d sell it with his Viagra for a few quid. Both markets are on the up and up. ( Cerdita) Piggy, is the name other adolescent girls...

Roz Chast (2023 ) I Must Be Dreaming . Roz Chast draws cartoons and writes for the New Yorker . You know where I’m going with this. Award-winning. Bestseller. It’s predictable as every Scandinavian citizen (including illegal refugees in the interest of parity) have written at least one bestselling novel. And Sigmund *Fraud, The Interpretation of Dreams . Dreams, of course, are never predictable. Perhaps that’s what makes them so fascinating. (*...

Scotland and surfing is an oxymoron like sunbathing on Mars. I’m with Billy Connolly on that one. The North Sea can wait. You go in feeling blue and you come out bluer. If the cold doesn’t get you, the midges or clegs will as I know from experience. Rodger Cox is made of sterner stuff than Jaws . He’s been writing about surfing in The Scotsman since 2005. The View From the Shoulder is apparently when you’re up on your board, riding that wave...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002kkn7/rosalie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalie_(2023_film) I didn’t get it at first. France, 1870. Rosalie is a young woman (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) awaiting marriage. She’s beautiful and fresh faced as eighteen-year old Dana (Rosemary Scallon) who was Ireland’s first ever Eurovision winner in 1970. All Kinds of Everything… reminds me of you.’ She lists them (and let’s take into consideration this if...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002k7zf/evil-does-not-exist Evil Does Not Exist - Wikipedia I felt quite cosmopolitan having already watched one of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s films, Drive My Car . Evil Does Not Exist begins and ends with a slow tracking shot of trees. Get a fucking move on was my thoughts. I suppose, I got the message in the end. Something poetical, slow moving. But to me just more trees (with no swear words). The plot is quite...

Everyone has a story—seen it, been it, done it. Agents and booksellers need a hook line or in marketing jargon, unique selling point. Something to reel in book buyers. Jackie Malton’s is in the title. Jackie Malton had a middle class upbringing. She couldn’t do maths, which meant she couldn’t go to university (which currently affects tens of thousands of others for much the same reason). Her parents thought her a bit thick. University was out of...

This Is Your Own Time You’re Wasting by Lee and Adam Parkinson — Manchester Primary school teachers and brothers. The duo behind the podcast Two Mr Ps, which has been listened to over four million times and authors of Put a Wet Paper Towel On It a Sunday Times bestseller. There are around 600 000 teachers in the UK (Scotland 53 400) which provide an audience for classroom mayhem and a ready pool of stories which involve shit, sick, sexual...

‘Freeconomic’ is a made-up word. We get it. Although few of us buy into it. Mark Boyle’s goal was quite simple. He outlines it in the Prologue. I wasn’t aware there was a ‘Buy Nothing Day’. Most of the days of my week are buy nothing days. But I’d be stretching it a bit to manage 365 days. Mark Boyle on Buy Nothing Day, 28 th November 2008, decided he wouldn’t spend a penny for a year. Ironically, he provoked a media feeding frenzy. ‘Be the...