It's been a lousy day, weather-wise, and there's nothing I like doing more than messing about with a spreadsheet (I know, I know, I really should get a life!), so I thought you might be interested in some of the statistics concerning the recent ' Bring Out Your Dead' series of stories: The story, in its current form, appeared as a series of 54 weekly episodes, published on ABCTales commencing in January, 2023. The story had originally commenced...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/gagarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gagarine When time and place merge in this way, usually, you’ve got something special. The idea is quite simple. Youri (Alséni Bathily) has been abandoned by his mum. He’s a precocious, a 16-year-old boy living in Cité Gagarine, a housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine, who dreams of becoming an astronaut. But he channels his gift for fixing things into trying to fix the...

In which my Undertakers take a two week respite

I heard about Lorraine Adair’s death in a convoluted way. I sometimes pass her sister on the canal embankment on my bike. Teresa is usually walked by a Rottweiler. I hang an arm out and wave as I pass. Teresa is married to Tam Henry. Lorraine was the youngest of the eight Adair’s. There are more Henrys than cement in Clydeside brickwork. So she’s related to most Catholics in Clydebank and many Protestants, too. I’d passed her twice in three days...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bront%C3%ABs-Inferno-Ewan-Lawrie/dp/B0CYSZJZ7N/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr = Writers create versions of themselves on the page. Ewan Lawrie is a better version of myself on ABCtales. I read Bronte’s Inferno in one go. I couldn’t decide whether Bronte’s Inferno with a veiled reference to the Bronte sisters and the mystical worlds they created with their brother was also a satirical play on the...

REBLOG TO MARK 2Ist. When Davie McCallum, aged 31, went missing on 28 th March 2003, his son David (junior) was aged five and about to start school. Now he’ll be twenty-four or twenty-five, he’ll be approaching the same age when his dad started a family. His wee brother, Robbie, was a one-year-old baby. Now he’ll have left Clydebank High School, the same school as his dad and older brother. The mother of his sons, Margaret McDowell, waiting for...

Hi all, hope your all ok, still creating brillinat work. missed my ABC family and hope soon more work from me. Take care all and have a fun, peaceful Easter x

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/memories-of-murder/on-demand/73142-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memories_of_Murder Most of my writing is in Scottish Noir. In other words, if you’re waiting for a happy ending, watch The Waltons . Memories of Murder is South Korean Noir, directed and written by Bong Joon-ho. Largely based on investigation into the unsolved rapes and murders of young women that took place in Hwaseong in the late 1980s. In...

Here We Are or Here We Are again. Graham Swift won the Booker Prize for (I think) Last Orders . I checked to see if I’d reviewed it. I haven’t. But I have read it. But what sticks in my mind is the film version. Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren as the wife of the Caine character. Why am I going on about this? Well, Here We Are has much the same plot and tagline. Brighton, 1959. Punters are sick of war and rationing. They demand...

Story and Poem of the Week, and Inspiration Point 22 March 2024 Some very good writing indeed this week. Give yourselves a pat on the back for making this job as difficult as ever. Story of the Week I very much liked Starfish Girl’s The Spa . Equally good were Parts 1 & 2 of Blighter’s Rock’s The Plan. But in the end Celticman was in competition with himself – and not for the first time – with The Little Lady and the eventual winner. So with...