celticman's blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b049bcfb Motor City Detroit no longer has motors and has lost much of its manufacturing base. About a third of its building lie empty, about 70 000 abandoned lots, many of them burned out. An estimated 20 000 homeless try to find somewhere to sleep in one of the coldest winters on record. Just when they thought things couldn’t get any worse Stacey Dooley is parachuted in to investigate. She immediately hits it off...

Jimmy McGovern has got his own production company. Anything he produces is snapped up and given prime billing by BBC 1. So when he rallies against the law of joint entreprise, McGovern doesn’t write to Parliament about it. He creates a drama. What can we expect? Strong women characters and weak men. Long pauses and melancholic trumpet solos and tunes. Working class lads that get shafted when they do the wrong thing and then shafted again when...

A good book makes you change your mind. I used to think the dropping of ‘Little Boy’ over Hiroshima was unnecessary. The American and their Allies had control of the skies. They were getting closer to mainland Japan. It was just a matter of time. But this isn’t a history book. This is an old-fashioned testament of the lost and found. Louis Zamperini’s mother was sixteen when she had her second son on January 26th 1917 (he had an elder brother...

Published posthumously Bulgakov’s classic is one of those books I kept meaning to read. The Master is Satan, or Woland, making a visit to Moscow, to have a look at mankind to see if they’ve changed much. But the master is also a would-be novelist, and the lover of Margarita. He is writing about Pontius Pilate, the astrologer’s son and fifth Procurator of Judea. At the trial of Christ Satan, of course, was there and had a front row seat, so when...

I love the World Cup. Simple match report. Rooney is not Suarez. England have a dog’s chance. Gerard, like Cassilis has been guilty of big game errors (think of his pass back that cost Liverpool the league). Here he missed an easy defensive header. Suarez didn’t miss the goal. Two goals of exquisite beauty. One a header. Suarez, Suarez, even a half-fit Suarez, is the top man. Rooney tap in. He peaked too early, three World Cups ago. Scholes was...

Jane wrote a few stories on Abctales. Here is a link to one http://www.abctales.com/story/ashb/boat-trip-3 Needless to say, after getting a coveted cherry she went on to win numerous awards and to have her short-story Saltwater Project published. The theme is water. I’ll not give the plot away, but in her first story in the collection Róisín, the younger sister of the narrator, follows up with her own story, about growing up in an Irish...

The title comes from the old Vera Lynn number: ‘There’ll be bluebirds over/ The white cliffs of Dover,/ Tomorrow, just you wait and see.’ Somehow Vesna associated that song with England, a country she knew little about, but knew vaguely through obsessing over old and new songs. This gave her a bridge into learning English, which was to prove useful in later life, because at the beginning of this memoir, she is a normal sixteen-year-old girl...

I don’t usually go to stage plays. I can count on one finger the number of plays I go to, especially if they’re musicals. Musicals and I have got an understanding. I don’t bother them and they don’t bother me. But this was one of those ones were my sister got tickets and told me I was going. Never argue with your big sister and never pay for your ticket. Pressganged, because her son was playing Fat Sam, even though he’s not fat and his name is...

Searching for Sugar Man BBC 4 9pm, director Malik Bendjelloul (R.I.P.) This is one of those programmes that make you believe in Jesus. Jesus Rodriguez that is. He was a 1970s guitar playing, singer that wrote his own songs and was described by record producer as ‘way beyond a musical artist’ and above Bob Dylan. He brought out two albums in the early seventies. Both didn’t do as well at the producers hoped. His record company let him go and...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rwm3r I never miss the Champions League Final. I never miss Wallander. When the whistle blew I didn’t know what to do. I decided to be a man and get drunk and boo the telly and watch the fitba. Later, in recrimination at missing the Wallander episode of ‘Missing’ I watched it on catch-up. I’m at that age now when I can say I love Wallander. He’s the kind of detective that gets drunk and leaves his gun in the...