celticman's blog

I got up late. Laughing Boy phoned and asked if I was going out to watch the football. Usually that would be a given. Celtic’s last league game at Parkhead this season. It’s on Sky. The pubs are open and I could expect to be steamin-drunk by half-time since I’m a bit of a lightweight and that’s 45 minutes of valuable drinking time. But I couldn’t be arsed, which is the Celtic equivalent of a mortal sin and despite ten minutes of badgering I...

This is the first of three parts. ‘Fixing the System’ focussed on the fallout from the London Interbank Offer Rate (Libor) Scandal and in particular it focussed on Bob Diamond at Barclays, an unapologetic banker’s banker. In old- fashioned times a promissory note could be exchanged for an equal amount of gold coins, money was issued by the mint. Money was something you could get your hands on. Shaving a bit off Her Majesty’s currency was liable...

The trick was I watched this at 10pm after watching The Genius of Marie Curie. We all know that she won the Nobel for Physics and later the Nobel for Chemistry, and the half-life of uranium is 16 000 years. What is the half- life of TV fame? Ben Earl’s TV stunts are undoubtedly brilliant. I can’t explain them, but I can’t explain a lot of things. I can’t explain, for example, why Kylie is so cute, but her sister isn’t. I can’t explain what I...

I read this on Kindle. I prefer paper but it was kinda apt reading it electronically as I'd already read most of it on abc tales. It's a short book; a few hours reading. But since I love books that's not a chore and this is a love story. It's a page turner in a book without pages. Young Joe, aged 14, got a part-time job as a butcher's boy. His gaffer was Roy and he showed him all the world had to offer- and it was there for the taking -for those...

Malcolm Bradbury ‘The History Man’ and creative writing tutor to a shedload of novelists, suggests that if you get to page 25, or thereabouts, you’ve made a commitment to a book and are likely to finish it. I used to be like that, feeling guilty if I started a book and never finished it. I started Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved, three times, but never got beyond the first two pages, now I know it’s good, very good indeed and I’d have berated myself...

I used to watch Dave Allen at Large with my family. It was one of the few shows my Da liked. There was a checklist of things he liked. One of them was being Irish. Check. One of them was being Catholic. Check. Another of them was being Irish and Catholic. Check-check. It also helped that Dave Allen looked a bit like his best mate McBride with the coal-black hair and a subversive attitude to authority. It was all well and good to mock the church...

written by Daniel Gordon and produced by Nicholas Bonner. This documentary is like a visual diary, it begins February 2003 and ends April 2003. It follows young gymnasts and their families as they prepare for the Mass Games in Pyongyang. Two million people live in Pyongyang and one million take part in the games which includes mass parades to celebrate the auspicious day of Kim Jong- Il's or Kim Jong il's beneficent leadership. Both are...

Both of these are short books. I read Tomato Red in about three hours. Winter's Bone is about the same length. Both are situated in small Missouri towns, but in Winter's Bone Ozak is almost a backwood identity, and Ree Dolly Jessup is part of that crazed religion of don't tell and take care of your own kin. It's told in the third person. Here's how it starts: Ree 'Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries...

North Korea is the kind of place that Team America: World Police can make fun of with impunity. But with KimJong-Un, son of Kim Jong-Il 'testing' rockets and threatening nuclear war the world seems nearer Armageddon. This documentary gives some insight into North Korea. But mass starvation and the death of perhaps millions to hunger is quickly passed over. The 'labour' camps in which three generations of families are send to be routinely...

I am introverted, so why am I telling you this? Does that make me an extroverted introvert, or worse, is it an affectation something I've adopted along the way to make myself more interesting, like a lisp and a way of twisting my finger upwards when drinking tea, but nobody noticed? The answer, of course, is it's complicated. Introversion or extroversion is on a continuum. I scored about 15 out of 20 in the initial check-list score, with 2 or 3...