celticman's blog

This is an exclusive book club. There are only two people in it, Will and his mother Mary Anne, and one of them dies. Mary Anne always read the last few pages of a book before starting the beginning. She liked to know what happened. I guess we all do. Death is the great taboo. One of the guy’s I went to school with brother was in the pub after their mum died. I told him I was sorry. Recently I asked an acquaintance I’d known about twenty years,...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07n2w8t/artsnight-series-3-12-meg-rosoff Novelist Meg Roscoff examines creativity. She’s a late bloomer, coming to the writing game, aged 47, with her debut novel, How I Live Now winning a major literary award. I haven’t read any of her work. Nor have I read the young Irish author Eimear MacBride’s A Girl is a Half Formed Thing , which won the Bailey Prize. But I do know who Anne Marie Duff is, although not...

If you are old enough you’ll remember the teacher at school leaving a star on the page of your jotter for writing. Gold, silver, yellow and red stars. Well, Amazon do the same kind of thing. You hover over the star and there’s suggestion of how much you liked or disliked a book. If you hover over the customer reviews and click you can read what reviewers thought about the book. https://www.amazhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp...

I liked Charlie Sherry’s interview with Irvine Welsh, and I talked about it with him on my mobile. I’m not a great man for phones. Boy can Charlie talk. Irvine Welsh probably never got a word in. But one thing stuck with me the last few days and it’s not the Renton quote from Trainspotting, which I’ve some sympathy with, ‘It really is shite being Scottish.’ Nor is it Welsh’s upbeat message, ‘Scots now have a positive can-do attitude which bodes...

You can see the shell of the La Scala from Second Avenue. I can’t remember the first X-rated movie I went to see there, but you can bet the fear on my face was real enough as I got to the turn at the top of the stairs and I expected the woman taking the tickes to eye me up and say, ‘Nah, son you look about fifteen’. Which would be about right, even though I did have a proper suit jacket on and open-necked collar to somehow make me look older,...

Debut novel. Lily Poole. Set in Dalmuir. (Well, actually, the house I stayed in Dickens Avenue, if we're being specific). Got a lot of support here for this novel. Have a read and tell me what you think. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lily-Poole-Jack-ODonnell/dp/1783522356 One reviewer said was a 'compelling read'. And he'd 'demolished it in two days.' He made a comparison. 'Opened my eyes to issues of mental health and its perceptions in the same way...

I can hear my partner, Mary, yakking on the phone downstairs, talking to her Auntie Mary about another Auntie- Eleanor who is dying. ‘She did have a bit of fear…’ she’s talking about her Granny, not her Auntie Eleanor, but the story is familiar, the same one. The Big C. ‘Apparently one in three people get cancer,’ Philip Wright, the thirteen-year old narrator tells the reader. That’s a 50/50 chance. That’s a joke. Jokes don’t have to be funny,...

A good week for me. I’ve moved up the alphabet from arsehole to author. There was brouhaha over the other side of the Atlantic over plagiarism. You may not have noticed, but I’m attuned to these social markers. Donald Trump’s second or third wife (who is doing the counting and who really cares) in a speech supporting her husband’s suitability to lead not just the Republican party, but the American nation as President, began her speech with...

I share the same page as Jeremy Corbyn. We supported this crowdfunded book published by Unbound and I’d guess Corbyn shares many of my interests in equality and social justice. Left Field as the name suggests is about the You and non-You as a house master described the apparent differences between houses at Canford school in Dorset, to a pubescent Wilson, at the fag end of the not-so-swinging fifties. David Wilson or Commie Wilson as he was...

I was a bit miffed reading The Observer , ‘IN FOCUS’, that no one had asked me to write about David Cameron’s legacy. I can only guess that’s because a blank page wouldn’t appeal to the reader. They would think it was some kind of trick – like global warming on a miserable and wet Scottish Sunday. I listened to Jeremy Corbyn stand up (OK you can’t hear someone standing up on the radio)in the House of Commons (with very few commoners in the House...