celticman's blog

Writing a review is straightforward. Beginning, middle and end. Often in the shape of a triangle or baggy diamond—if you get too wordy—before you reach your conclusion. You become an expert in your field with a certain gravitas. The problem here is I can think two (or more things) at once. Cognitive dissonance is a way of life for Catholics, with virgin births, saints, angels and demons, and life ever after. Heaven and hell is up for grabs,...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000t86z/storyville-dark-secrets-of-a-trillion-dollar-island-garenne ‘The Island of Jersey is a self-governing possession of the British Crown separate from the UK with its own laws, financial rules and Parliament.’ Some of its most influential figures are appointed by the Queen. When secrets from its past surfaced in 2007 they revealed deep distrust and division between those now running the island, proud...

I Care a Lot, (2020) Amazon, Written by J Blakeson and Directed by J Blakeson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGyYcHch-ZE Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) doesn’t lose and she sees two types of people in the world, ‘sharks and prey’. Her prey is old people, and she’s worked out a lucrative gig. She files paper in court and gains court-sanctioned conservatorship. Mostly that applies to older people with dementia that can’t feed themselves or look...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000ths2/footballs-darkest-secret-series-1-1-the-end-of-silence https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tjhv https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000tjgr/footballs-darkest-secret-series-1-3-the-reckoning Dalmuir Diamonds is long gone. A boy’s football club I wasn’t part of, but knew about. Players aged nine, ten or eleven played on the gravel park at Beardmore Street in the early 1970s. The park paved over...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000th7v/storyville-undercover-oap... Undercover OAP was short-listed 2021 Oscars in the documentary category. The set-up is the kind of cheesy romps made by post-war Ealing studios. Detective Romulo needs to recruit someone to infiltrate a Chilean nursing home. Their mission is to find Sonia, who is resident in the nursing home, and to determine if she’s been properly looked after, or abused (the implicit...

Hi Dougie, I’ve had a look at your manuscript. We both know that it’s hard trying to get anything published when we write about people like us, using the language we speak—Scottish dialect. Remember all that fuss when James Kelman, for example, wrote in stream- of-consciousness, working-class dialect and a judge ofThe Booker Prize winner 1994, a Rabbi, no less, resigned because she (it might have been a he) thought How Late It Was, How Late was...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britney-Spears-Unbreakable-Louise-Burke/dp/B07T7KSYN1 There’s a new documentary out about Britney Spears revolving around her court-sanctioned conservatorship order that has lasted thirteen years and counting. I Care a Lot described as a psychological thriller shows how these orders really work. They are intended to protect those that need spoon fed and allocated pocket money, but only if they show that they need it...

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x64a7x6 https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x64a7x2 I wrote a story a good while ago (I don’t exactly remember when, because it wasn’t very good) about reincarnation. The plot was simple. This rich guy had found a chemical marker that could be traced and he could leave his substantial wealth to himself. Cut out the middle man, sons and daughters. Win-win. Hokum. I was, of course, aware that of the myths of paying...

Janice Galloway’s autobiographies This is Not About Me and All Made Up begin in the same way: ‘This is my family’. Stylistically, she doesn’t use quotation marks. There’s no standard way of writing in the Scottish language and dialect. I was checking her work out to find some kind of consistency in my writing. Reaching for the musicality of speech mixed with social realism. She’s light-touch and mostly Standard English. Not into writing as we...

https://soundcloud.com/5x15/george-saunders-and-max-porter-in-conversation Chop a Chekov story into pieces. Echo of class at Syracuse. Break up a story, a page at a time. Forces us to ask that question, why do I keep reading? If I read a paragraph I’m in a different place than before, where is it? Granular level. More irritating if the story is really good (cf, working with a shit story). Forcing the pause. Sit there for a few minutes asking,...