celticman's blog

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/under-lock-and-key Under Lock and Key highlights many of the problems discussed in caring for vulnerable people with complex needs. This shows how 'total institutions' work. I tackled this theme directly in my unpublished novel Hut's and more indirectly (I like to think in a Hitchcock fashion) in my novel Lily Poole . https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp/1783522356

I was out watching the fitba yesterday, having a couple of pints and old Lawrie was trying to explain what pub he’d been in, years ago, not by telling us where it was, rather by telling us who’d once owned it and who’d given him the money to buy the pub, but he couldn’t remember that either. ‘It was a great Scottish author.’ That was the clue to unravelling the mystery. ‘William McIlvanney,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘A great...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08gd0gc/growing-up-in-scotland-a-century-of-childhood-series-1-1-education This is fantastic viewing. I wasn’t about in the 16 th Century when John Knox thought it a good idea that every village and every Kirk should have a schoolteacher, and every child should be able to read god’s word in the bible as a bastion against Popery. Until fairly recently that was the model of schooling for many children in...

All writers are historians. Subject and object. Subjecting what we know with what other people know. In other words, we read to write. We look for resonance in our writing and our reading. And sometimes somebody says it better and you’ve just got to acknowledge mastery. This is an honest book, a beautiful book in so many ways. When I start taking notes— Papers: 1991-2003; Tesserae 2003-2007; Letters 2011-2016—I find that I’ve copied word for...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08dww6z/the-scottish-bounty-hunter?suggid=b08dww6z Here’s the tagline Christian Matlock, aged 28, is a professional bounty hunter in Virginia. He used to be Scottish and now he’s an all-American action hero, spending days and nights hunting prisoners that have skipped bail. This is a three-act piece with a photogenic star, rock and roll music, guns, drugs, outlaws and shiny fast cars. ACT 1. Meet Christian...

Fiona Macdonald (2011) Robert Burns. A Very Peculiar History . This is a children’s book or a primer. ‘With the Bards own rhymes’. That suits me. I was once a child, and I’m always ready to be primed. Ignorance is a great motivation. I once shared a desk with the august figure of Professor Gerry Carruthers, Director of the Robert Burns Centre, University of Glasgow. I don’t remember him as being particularly smart, or brainy, as we used to call...

There is a moment at the end of the 1960s when race war is engulfing and burning America and the ‘chickens have come to roost’ in prisons, when Bunker is taking from his cell block in San Quentin to visit a parole officer. The parole officer laughs. Bunker’s file is the biggest he’s ever seen, the size of a phone book. He stops laughing when he reads the note attached, see File 2. This is File 1 and 2, not written by the state, not written by...

Episode 1, Series 1, BBC 2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08f00s0/sas-rogue-warriors-series-1-episode-1 epistemology noun PHILOSOPHY the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion. I recently reviewed a Channel 5 series, Secrets of the SAS: In Their Own Words . Other programmes have SAS tags in their title, or synonyms such as Special Forces...

This was a terrific game with Celtic players scoring all seven goals. Dedryck Boyata scoring a terrific headed own-goal for St Johnstone after Celtic had opened them up several times, with a goal from Liam Henderson in the first five minutes. This continues a recent trend in which Celitc’s so called fringe players come in and not only do they do a job, they frequently end up man on the match. Stuart Armstrong was first to pick up the baton and...

I was at a Requiem Mass for Rose Anne Winn today. It was great. I don’t mean the religious service. I can take them or leave them. Apart from funerals, usually it’s the latter. Auntie Rose was my godmother. The last remaining matriarch of the Connelly family, which included my mum Jean, and her sisters Auntie Phyllis and Auntie Cathy. Only Uncle Ben, in Canada, of the patriarchal line remains. Uncle Tom and Uncle Terry are dead. What I mean by...