celticman's blog

The Slowworm’s Song begins with ‘Start,’ and ends with ‘Start’, and in between there is a ‘Stop’. I guess that’s true of most of life, although there might be a lot of hanging about in between. Ex-soldier Stephen Rose lives in Somerset, which is home of sorts. It was where he was brought up by his father. Quakers don’t join the army, but Stephen went against the grain of his father’s pacifist beliefs and that decision defined his adult life. He...

Google announced they would delete data. Algorithms rule the world. And their algorithm made Sergey Brin and Larry Page the richest men in the world. That’s the equivalent of an oil company announcing it would no longer produce petrol. Google would not cooperate with law officials who sought to prosecute women seeking abortion in lieu of Roe versus Wade after searching online, using Google. Google is a noun and verb. Google trends offer the...

Robert Edric is six or seven years older than me, but scenes of a Sheffield childhood are remarkably similar to mine. A writer’s job is to remember. I remember my da punched my mum. My sisters would probably make some excuse, as if it never happened. I don’t remember me wee brother setting his jammies on fire, and him being rushed to hospital. I was only a kid, but I find it strange I forgot what happened that day. Edric does remember everything...

Poets make the best writers. Ways To Fold a Swan is a chapbook. I remember Rachel Smart from when she was an editor at ABCtales (she probably still is). I read everything she wrote. Poetry mostly, but also prose. Story of the week stuff. I like her writing because she writes about people I recognise. People like me. Working class, and unashamedly so. Words she recognises come preloaded with meaning. ‘Rouse, ravish, rape.’ Roe versus Wade. Tens...

Girl, Women, Other won the Booker Prize for Bernardine Evaristo in 2019. This mimics one of her twelve characters, Amma. Her play at The National, The Last Amazons of Dohomey is a popular and critical hit. Amma, the outsider, has become Amma, the insider. Bernardine Everisto, playwright, poet, author and critic has become part of the cultural elite. An insider and outsider. Four chapters, twelve characters. Each chapter giving verse of their...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0017x2b/panorama-undercover-britains-biggest-gp-chain https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/13/britains-biggest-chain-of-gp-surgeries-accused-of-profiteering My partner recently had to go into hospital. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow, Accident and Emergency. It was recently slated for having up to a thirteen-hour waiting time. We know there is little point phoning for a GP appointment on the...

Summy passed me working in Kerr’s garden in Shakespeare Avenue. It runs parallel with our horseshoe shaped street—and he stays in McGrath’s old council house, a few houses down—from home. He was taking his two sons down the road. I imagined it was to school or nursery. One of the boys fell behind, and he was acting up. Summy was firm, but loving with him. Summy’s mum was an alkie. His step-dad was away working for the Shah of Iran. He spent a...

Good news—we don’t have to watch Scotland until September. Stand-out player, Stuart Armstrong scores a first-half double to give Scotland a first-half lead after a shaky start. Three minutes before half-time Hovhanisyan got two yellows and therefore a red and was sent off for a shocking tackle and sticking the head on John McGinn. Just before the end of the match, David Turnbull—a long term victim of injury—was assaulted by Kamo Hovanisyan...

Disasters always happen in some faraway place. Then we forget about them. Not right away, but gradually our attention fades and we move onto something else, somewhere else. Lucy Easthope’s job is not to forget or look away, but to search for patterns and lessons learned. She offers a personal account of what it feels like to miscarry a much wanted child, time after time (she calls them ‘Titans’) but still live in hope for a better outcome. None...

Over 100 days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Already the West has grown weary of fuel and wheat shortages and high prices. The eighth year of war. Russia occupying Crimea and Donbass regions, and almost twenty per cent of Ukraine since then, creating a land border, including access to the Black Sea. Catherine Belton’s prescient book is early and late. The modus operandi is in the title. Ryzard Kapuscinski’s Imperium is instructive how it...