https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p032kjg0/play-for-today-series-10-1-just-a-boys-game ‘You’re getttin’ it McQuillan’. I’m old enough to remember this when it was first broadcast 8 th November 1979. Peter McDougall’s portrayal of working class life hit a nerve. It helped that large chunks of it were filmed in Clydebank and Drumchapel. Marathon shipyards featured. Or it might have been John Browns. We’re on the nostalgia trail. By day Jake...

Never thought of doing this before but as I have been once again ordered by the lovely Linda Wigzell Cress to get writing again, here goes. Having been active for the most part throughout my life, it came as a shock when I was told that I had Muscular Dystrophy. A muscle wasting condition which meant I was going to get weaker and weaker as my later years have proved. I knew something was wrong in my late 30's but my GP just dismissed this saying...

Kathleen Jamie (2019) Surfacing. ‘Please, are you worker, or student?’ the girl asked in polite English with Chinese accent. Kathleen Jamie, in an earlier incarnation, was asked that question. She was in eastern Amdo province, designated by China, ‘Autonomous Region of Tibet’, which means it was regarded as China. I’d heard of Amdo because of Peter Matthiessen’s classic, The Snow Leopard . I guess that makes me a student of literature. In the...

We've had some delicious pieces this week but poem of the week goes to Queen Beatle with a bone-crunching morsel: https://www.abctales.com/story/queen-beatle/falcons-regret story of the week is heart-warming take on enduring love from Ice Rivers: https://www.abctales.com/story/ice-rivers/bangers-galway-hooker here's the inspiration point: https://www.abctales.com/inspiration-point-ip

Ali Smith (2019) Spring. Ali Smith is the same age as me and was born in Inverness, Scotland (for those of you that don’t know Inverness is in Scotland—yeh, that happens). She’s an international star whose writing is lauded. The Guardian , for example, called Autumn , ‘The novel of the year’. I stuck with Spring and read it from start to finish. I found bits of it a chore and probably wouldn’t have read beyond the first ten pages, but for her...

2020 Cerasus Poetry Olympics Souvenir Anthology

Summer’s Up! We’ve all had a great summer, after a lousy spring when the virus ran riot through the population, and hospitals were sorely pressed to cope with the flood of virus victims. The worst of it perhaps was the way it ran riot through many care homes, when people were not sufficiently isolated from the virus, after the hospitals sent older patients back to or into care homes for their care. But summer was okay. Most of us thought we had...

Goalkeeper is an easy pick. Celtic hired a private jet to bring Vasilos Barkas back from a recent international. He was on the bench for Greece. He’s not really done anything that Scott Bain, or Conor Hazard, or you’d expect any other bog-standard goalie to do. He’s certainly not won us matches the way—may he rot in reserve-team-football hell the Southampton keeper we got on loan last season did. Hope we don’t need him, but time for Barkas to...

I couldn’t find my phone, and I asked Mary to ring it. And I’d a message from Laughing Boy, Craig—telling me his older brother, Kevin, was dead. My thoughts were Kevin’s poor old mum, Lynn. But Kevin always kept an eye out for Laughing Boy. And when he hooked up with Carla and her son, Aaron, they were part of the family. When Jack was born, Kevin taught him how to fucking swear. These were the kind of life skills he had to learn, pronto, or...

Lots of wonderful things to read on the site this week, and our Picks are two absolute gems. Story of the Week is Rosalie Kempthorne's beguiling 'Boys and Girls', a response to last week's Inspiration Point. It's a fairy tale and, like all the best fairy tales, it has an unsettling edge and hints of darkness amongst the beautiful magic: https://www.abctales.com/story/rosaliekempthorne/boys-and-girls Poem of the Week is Noo's searing 'Oath'. It's...