celticman's blog

The title comes from the old Vera Lynn number: ‘There’ll be bluebirds over/ The white cliffs of Dover,/ Tomorrow, just you wait and see.’ Somehow Vesna associated that song with England, a country she knew little about, but knew vaguely through obsessing over old and new songs. This gave her a bridge into learning English, which was to prove useful in later life, because at the beginning of this memoir, she is a normal sixteen-year-old girl...

I don’t usually go to stage plays. I can count on one finger the number of plays I go to, especially if they’re musicals. Musicals and I have got an understanding. I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me. But this was one of those ones were my sister got tickets and told me I was going. Never argue with your big sister and never pay for your ticket. Pressganged, because her son was playing Fat Sam, even though he’s not fat and his name is...

Searching for Sugar Man BBC 4 9pm, director Malik Bendjelloul (R.I.P.) This is one of those programmes that make you believe in Jesus. Jesus Rodriguez that is. He was a 1970s guitar playing, singer that wrote his own songs and was described by record producer as ‘way beyond a musical artist’ and above Bob Dylan. He brought out two albums in the early seventies. Both didn’t do as well at the producers hoped. His record company let him go and...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rwm3r I never miss the Champions League Final. I never miss Wallander. When the whistle blew I didn’t know what to do. I decided to be a man and get drunk and boo the telly and watch the fitba. Later, in recrimination at missing the Wallander episode of ‘Missing’ I watched it on catch-up. I’m at that age now when I can say I love Wallander. He’s the kind of detective that gets drunk and leaves his gun in the...

The Champions League final is always a disappointment and this was no exception. Much was made of Atletico Madrid losing the final to Bayern Munich, after a reply, forty years ago. Little was said about how they cynically hacked and butchered Celtic’s Quality Street Kids and took turns booting Jimmy Johnstone up in the air at Celtic Park to help qualify for that final. Watch it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDElMvVdOK4 . That’s...

For me the gold standard of war novels remains All Quiet on the Western Front . We are the first generation not to be involved in a World War (if you exclude global warming, a war we’ve already lost). Klay reminds us the job of soldiers, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is to kill people. He gets inside the character’s heads. That everything in Iraq is fucked up is given. That the infantrymen (and is largely working-class men) doing the fucking up are...

Books I’ve been unable or unwilling to finish recently. This is a big step for me. I used to think I owed the book, the author and the universe the obligation of finishing a book when I started it. Rather like hatching a chick, when the eggs broke you’ve got to watch it grow, even if it’s brain-muddled with only one eye. So here goes, a list of books that are unputdownable, only I did. Tom Rob Smith (2009) Child 44 . I got to page 13 on this one...

The cover of Death and the Penguin has the outline of a penguin in black, one wing is the barrell of a gun and the other a handle, the trigger is superimposed on the white bib of the penguin. It’s ingenious. I was halfway through the book before I noticed. The book is genius. Set in the Ukraine, after the fall of Communism, Viktor Alekseyvich Zolotoroyov is a writer that can only manage to write the occasional short story that no one wants to...

I've shortened Writing Process Blog Tour to (WPBT). No I haven't. I'm tryng to make it longer and more interesting. "As part of the Writing Process Blogging Tour, I've been invited by John Allen - a freelance writer to talk about what my writing process is." Writers always start off by saying it’s hard work. Maybe you’re in the wrong profession. Writing isn’t work. Writing is just messing about with words. The consolation is that most of the...

I watched the movie and it was as scary as a box of melted Maltesers. Part of the reason for that is my fault. I’m old and cynical and nothing much on the telly can scare me as much as looking in the mirror. I thought I’d give the book a chance. After all it inspired a film and an extended run on stage as a play. Nineteen years one of the blurbs on the book tells the reader. Wow. The book must be really good. It’s only 160 pages (including...