celticman's blog

Notes on nostalgia. Adolescence, when neurons exploded and rearranged themselves into them or us. Your senses discombobulated by girls. Everything tasted better. We scattered ourselves on a sea of faces. Some familiar. Some not familiar enough. Our voices thin as scratch-marks. Snod’s hair, flame-red as the hottest summer of 1976, but soon to be eclipsed and forgotten. We knew we were indestructible. All answers copied from the back of an old...

I put aside a few hours on Sunday to read Ootlin, Jenni Fagan’s memoir, straight through. ‘Ootlin’ in a simple sense means outsider. From the Scottish word oot. Fagin tells the reader in the prologue, there are stories about stories. The social work department in Scotland, adoption agencies, psychiatric hospitals and the police all had files on Fagin and her family. The in-spectre of mad, bad or sad stories went before her even as a baby. She...

I’ve a signed copy of Isobel Shirlaw’s, A Proper Mother , and twice heard her read the beginning of her debut novel. But as we know, hearing is not the same as listening. Meeting her on the page offers greater understanding. Story structure is current and counter-current, much like the watery desert that is the Black Sea. Is, was, and ever shall be. ‘ Before’ ‘August 1974. ’ ‘On the last day of their honeymoon they thought they’d check out Agios...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002326c/the-outfit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outfit_(2022_film) Most of the action takes place in one night inside a tailor’s shop, which doubles as a stage, or in this case, film set. Chicago, 1956. Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) is an English cutter who runs a tailor shop in an area controlled by gangster Roy Boyle (Simon Russell Beale). Burling makes made-to-measure suits for Boyle and the well-...

Ask yourself a simple question. Would you rather be blind or deaf? We can’t really imagine it. But for most of us, the answer, I’d guess, would be easy. I’d much rather be deaf. I’ve only heard one guy say he’d rather be blind. He loved music so much the answer was obvious to him, too. Stuart Braithwaite is the lead singer of Mogwai. The band took their name from creatures in Gremlins but in China also means ‘demon’ (I think because I never...

Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel Fleishman is in Trouble was an international bestseller. Long Island Compromise is her second novel. Awards and television series inevitably to follow. Grab your reader with the first line. It’s the kind of cliché right up there with the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Akner knows her readers will want something smart, bookish and literary, perhaps left-leaning. Aware of the paradox of what you’d need to...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0022vjc/in-my-own-words-series-1-alison-lapper Alison Lapper: ‘The whole point about art is having something to say ‘I didn’t think art was about fitting in.’ Alison Lapper – an artist, a muse, a mother – explores her life through art and archive in this visually rich and emotionally intimate documentary as she emerges from the most difficult period of her life after the loss of her son Parys My name is...

WHY DON’T YOU switch off your television set phone and go and do something less boring instead? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Don%27t_You%3F https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/11/put-phone-down-habit-reading-books-english-oxford Smartphones aren’t as bad for you as smoking but are the reason our kids are intoxicated by their screens as glue sniffers. Most people in London know somebody that has their phone snatched from their hands...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023998/in-my-own-words-series-1-jackie-kay I was born around the same time as Jackie Kay. Like her, I wasn’t expected to live. I was brought home. She was given away by her white, birth, mother. Her father was Nigerian. She was put up for adoption. Her real mum and dad (Mr and Mrs Kay) already had a son. He too was adopted. She tells the story of how this happened. Her Glaswegian parents were told by...

I’d déjà vu reading Into the Uncanny . I felt that I’d read it before. Then again, I often pick books up, read a bit and put them down again. Danny Robins admits to being one of the lucky ones. One of the chosen. He was kicking around doing nothing very much with his life and trying to write a play about ghosts. Like me, he’d spent lots of time reading books about paranormal phenomena. Testing themselves by trying to bend my spoon by rubbing...