celticman's blog

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...

I was vaguely aware of Karl Ove Knausgaard, having read some reviews of his work. So I knew that the life that he lived was the material he used to build the narrative of his life and tell a story of how he became who he is. Some of my favourite reading material comes from Harpie. Thanks for the Vodka 2004, for example, tells the reader through a diary format what happens to her day to day. Her life is a shipwreck and as she goes under she tells...

I can only sympathise with Lily Allen. We too had somebody invade our house on Friday night. Bit of a kerfuffle and the front door banging open and shut. I thought it was Alan, (not Lily Allen) Mary’s son, playing funny buggers. He does that sometimes and thinks he’s funny. He’s got a beard now, so it’s perhaps not the best time to tell him it isnae. And he’s off work, probably suffering from low self-esteem, which makes a wee change from...

Paul Mason is an optimist. I’m a pessimist. He outlines the problems mankind faces in the future and suggests as a utopian solution of free money and us all working together in a non-working world. I tend more towards the four horseman of the apocalypse scenario. Mason suggests there are a number of negative feedback loops that will work together to make the world a much poorer place for 99% of humanity, but if we reverse engineer this process...

I heard on the radio this afternoon that by a majority verdict of seven to two the jury at the inquest of the Hillsborough disaster, where 92 people died, many of them teenage boys, found that they were unlawfully killed. I don’t really know what that means, but hearing those at the inquest singing the Liverpool anthem ‘Walk On’ made me feel tearful. A vindication for those families that campaigned and sought justice and truth. Let us not forget...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07952b1/louis-theroux-drinking-to-oblivion Yesterday started much the same as always. I read the papers, Sunday Mail and The Observe r. It was a bit of a surprise that The Observer had plagiarised two of my blogs. One was the Kevin Mc Kenna article about why Celtic are so shite but we love them anyway; the other about inequality, CEO salaries and executive pay. I don’t blame The Observer, after all I...

We all know how this works. BP is on the slide. Share price dropping like a cascade of dominos. It’s not a good time to be in fossil fuels. China no longer buying; America fracking and the Middle Eastern countries pumping out more oil than you can shake a Sheik at. Even Saudi Arabia is feeling the pinch and trying to sell shares in its monopoly. The best thing a company that BP can do is sack worker [tick] and lower existing workers’ pay [tick]...

I knew the secret of this book before I read it. Joss Moody, jazz trumpeter, extraordinaire is really a woman. So what, I thought. I also thought it would be set in some seedy jazz country called New York. But it’s not, it’s set in London, Glasgow and Torr and spans about sixty years from the early fifties. And I’d guess, from reading Red Dust Road , it’s the kind of quiet place and space that Jackie Kay’s parents John and Ellen, who live in...

Ronny Delia will be the loneliest man in Scotland this morning. In case you didn’t notice Rangers are back. They beat Celtic in a Scottish Cup semi-final, in a penalty shoot-out, after drawing 2-2, after extra time. Triumphalism from the Huns, and rightly so. Over the piece they had more possession of the ball and were the better team. That tells you everything you need to know about Celtic. Out fought and out manoeuvred by a team made up of...

Hard to believe but Walter Smith has been talking sense. The real fear for Rangers should be ten-in-a-row. That’s five in the bag. Five to go. Obviously, Walter would play Goram in goal and Laudrup up front and use the other nine players as defenders. That worked for him, time after time. But Mark Warburton favours a more expansive game. Well, at least I hope he does. Because Walter Smith’s game plan is perfect for derailing the current Celtic...