celticman's blog

Euro2016

It’s great to see the football back on telly. The best part is it’s on normal telly and you don’t need a special box or to pay a subscription because then I just wouldn’t bother. That’s a bit of a shame because I watched almost every match in the Euros and World Cup since Scotland humbled Brazil in 1974, never lost a game in the tournament and still got sent home to think again. 1978 was good as well. Mario Kempes sticks in the mind. Argentina...

Erwin James (2016) Redeemable: A Memoir of Darkness and Hope.

‘Writing makes me feel I was really living.’ There’s irony in when Erwin James writes that he’s a Category-A prisoner and banged up for killing two people. He doesn’t dwell on that. No excuses of how it was a robbery that went wrong –twice- and turned a thief and his mates into murderers. I’m not usually criminal, although sense of humour border on it, but I also write to make sense of the world and there is a lot of Ewin James I recognise in...

David Millar (2011) Racing Through The Dark. The Fall and Rise of David Millar.

Today Maria Sharapova, the winner of five grand-slam tennis tournaments, received a two -year ban for failing a drugs test. It’s an old story, from hero to villain quicker than Honk Kong Phooey could do a karate chop. And he really was a super guy. What do I know about cycling? Not a lot. If I cycle along the cycle path to Clydebank, which is about a mile, I expect people to stand aside and applaud as I pass and to hold out bottles of water (or...

Storyville: Blackfish – The Whale That Killed, BBC 4, directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03j49l6/storyville-20132014-12-blackfish-the-whale-that-killed We all know the story of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick . Man versus whale and neither wins. Score draw on the coupon. I’ve started the books a few times and never got beyond the first pages. Wooden ships used to go away for a year or more and come back loaded down with whale blubber and oil. Prototype factory ships. Boiled down whale oil...

Tim Rhys-Evans: All in the Mind, BBC 1, 10.45pm. Director Mei Williams.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b075f78j/tim-rhysevans-all-in-the-mind?suggid=b075f78j I must admit I hadn’t a scooby who Tim Rhys-Evans is. I find out here he’s the auteur of a male voice choir, Only Men Aloud, which won a competition called Last Choir Standing, which led to sell out concerts and record gigs and an MBE from the Queen. None of these things interest me. What interests me is Rhys-Evans’s admission that he’s got a mental...

Karl Ove Knausgaard (2016) Some Rain Must Fall. My Struggle: Book 5. Translated from the Norwegian by Don Barlett.

Norway is one of the richest places in the world. Its citizens are well catered for. Hence Karl Ove can bounce from the Writer’s Academy, where he gets a bit of paper, a certificate, saying he’s a writer, to work in a radio station when he’s called up and claims he can’t serve because he’s a conscientious objector, to another course studying Fine Art. That takes him from around aged 19 until he’s 26. By the time this instalment is finished he’s...

Mea Culpa – my history of pitch invasions.

Scottish Cup Final 1980. I was part of the 70 000 crowd. Pitch invasion. Brought up in a deprived home where you always wanted the Indians to beat the cowboys, and Celtic to beat Rangers, no matter the odds and how many referees and masonic linesman they had in their pockets, I wanted one of those horses the police had. Cup-final win by a George McCluskey goal. My good mate Dav Prentice (R.I.P) was just the kind of arsehole that would say things...

Matthew Desmond (2016) Evicted. Poverty and Profit in the American City.

The blurb on the cover by Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reads: ‘A masterpiece. Beautiful, harrowing and deeply human’. You may remember that Rebecca Skloot immersed herself in the story of how a poor black woman, daughter of tobacco farmer, contracted a virulent cancer that killed her, but her cells were taken without her or her family’s knowledge and literally spawned a billion-dollar industry while those left...

Des Dillon at Dalmuir Library, 2pm

Last Saturday, when I was in Dalmuir Library, Gregor Fisher was doing a gig at 7pm. It was sold out. Tickets only. But let’s put this into perspective. Dalmuir Library is not the Albert Hall. Sold out means about thirty hard plastic chairs filled by wee woman with blue rinse and bookish leanings. A stocky wee guy with a bit of the blue rinse about him was setting up the microphone, practicing saying one-two, one-two. I didn’t want to tell him...

Gordon Abrahams 1948-2016

I was at Gordon Abraham’s funeral yesterday. He was born in 1948. I’ll let you do the maths. Gordon was an old guy, but despite having seven kids he never really grew up. He still liked a drink and a carry on. It was good to see so many people there. All age groups. And so many familiar faces. Dalmuir faces. None of us getting any younger. I’m sure Gordon would have got a kick out of the reason I never got allowed into his funeral. The funeral...

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