My boyfriend does not own a tv so he asked himself round to watch this, can't for the life of me think why (haha). Mary Beard at her best, giving us her trademark mix of erudition and earthiness. We get some history, some point of view,all backed up by relevant images.The ever present question are naked people great Art or simply there to turn other people on.(bit of both methinks). What about objectification ? And the nudes in the programme,...

I’m a hypocrite, in the week that Britain formally leaves the European Economic Union, an act of economic mutilation the equivalent of, for example, California seceding from the United States of America, I want Scotland to opt out of Britain. My fealty is not to Nicola Sturgeon or the Scottish National Party, but to the commonwealth of the Scottish people. Put simply, the future is green and will be built on interdependence not independence...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p081z4hg Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, tells the story of how he went from spike to spike and from town to town. The hungry and downtrodden were given a few slices of bread and some sweet tea. A bed for the night. Moved onto to anther town. They were not allowed to settle. Moved on to another town, a circuit of homeless, hungry men and women moving in an ever-expanding circuit of misery. This...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d2cw/murder-trial-the-disappearance-of-margaret-fleming-series-1-episode-1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d2fq/murder-trial-the-disappearance-of-margaret-fleming-series-1-episode-2 In 2019, Edward Cairney and Avril Jones are jointly charged with the murder of Margaret Fleming and brought to trial. The accused lived in Inverkip on the coast of the Firth of Clyde, a backwater (near where my...

In November 2018, reports suggested that scientist in China had altered the DNA of twin girls using CRISPR CAS 9 bio-technology. It would be the first time in history that humans edited the genetic code of future generations. DNA is usually referred to as the building blocks of life. RNA is DNA’s close cousin. If DNA is god’s handwriting on the world, RNA is god’s signature. CRISPR CAS 9 is a counterfeit RNA of god’s signature. A tweet from...

We made it through January! Goodness knows what the future holds - seems like a good time to look back. Scent is a great memory jerker so here is a whiff of the sea and the forest to stir up the past: Story of the week left me in pieces and reminded me how every house has a story - an inspiration point in itself - a beautifully drawn piece from Fatboy74 https://www.abctales.com/story/fatboy74/there-was-house-and-there-was-sea-2 Poem of the week...

I remember when John Ferguson slipped me twenty-quid and I went to the Oasis with the cash. My older brother Stephen—or SEV, as pre-Banksie, he liked to artistically daub on walls or doors— married his daughter Emily. Or wee Emily. I didn’t remember how small she was until I saw her today. Platform shoes of the kind that Elton John wore to play the part of Tommy, and sing Pinball Wizard , took Emily up to the glorious height of about five-foot (...

Elizabeth Strout is an internationally and critically acclaimed bestselling author of My Name is Lucy Barton. Lucy Barton, as a stock character, is also an author who writes mostly about farm life in Angash, Illinois. How her family were so desperately poor they ate scraps out of dump trucks and were shunned. The first chance she got to get away she took it. Later she became a successful writer in New York. The maxim ‘write what you know’ seems...

On page 402, towards the end of this second volume of the rise and rise of Lyndon Johnson, Robert A.Caro offers an insight into the former President’s personality. 'For a President to preserve as a personal memento a photograph showing the notorious Box 13 in the possession of his political allies—a photograph which by implication provides that someone was indeed in a positon to stuff it—is startling in itself. For him to display the photograph...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0535lq5/billy-connolly-portrait-of-a-lifetime Billy Connolly might well be Scotland’s greatest export after whisky. Both ITV and BBC are competing to squeeze the last dregs of life out of The Big Yin. I’ve checked, he’s not dead yet. But he does have motor- neurone disease and he’s coming up for seventy-five. He said it himself, other people’s success tend to form an inverted U-shaped curve. His success is...