As you get older the spring of optimism gives way to the winter of pessimism. You know that no matter how hard you try you will never play for Celtic, especially given the fact that you couldn’t get a game for your pub team. Surplus to requirements. Your bullshit detector, however, gets more refined with age. The charlatan that is Boris Johnson gets short-shrift for everything he says and everything he stands for, for being Boris Johnson,...

I’m well-disposed to liking this book, as Pat McDaid will tell you. The judge said I was ‘an educated man’ but a ‘danger to society’. I’d never been called educated before. I was pretty chuffed and my mind jumped to that Tobias Wolff short story when the guy laughs at the bank robbers with guns because they keep talking in clichés. Snobbish, I know. I admitted I was a danger because I kept losing my sobriety and finding my car keys. The judge...

Once again a big thank-you this week to all those who came to the Reading Event last Saturday. It was splendid, there was so much good stuff to listen to, and some highly enjoyable socialising afterwards. Here's to the next one! Our Poem of the Week was one of the pieces that was read out, 'Mars' by lavadis. It was a treat to hear the author read it, and it's as much of a treat to see it on the page: https://www.abctales.com/story/lavadis/mars...

Photo by Jeremy Avery on Unsplash The networker, John Naughton, Observer, Artificial Intelligence is making literary leaps. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/02/ai-artificial-intelligence-language-openai-cpt2-release I write stuff nobody much reads. Think of a number below ten and don’t multiply it. There’s a large hole in my idea of normality. I imagine someday, someone, somewhere will pay for my writing and I’ll be in the...

Many, many thanks to everyone who has contributed to ABC Tales via Just Giving this year. We literally wouldn't be here without you! Just Giving no longer provide us with names of donors unless they leave a message with their donation. We could obtain the list of names but we would have to pay a monthly fee of £15 for that, and it would eat into ABC's funds. So, if you donate, please do leave a message on our Just Giving site, or email jane@...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000bh0j/storyville-one-child-nation I’ve been pondering the difference between affect and effect. The former is a verb. The latter is a noun and verb. The etymology of affect suggests it has its roots in ‘a little like love’. The effect of China’s implementation of a one-child policy for couples, men and women, in the early 1980s was nothing like love. It was a top-down, Communist Party, misogynistic policy...

Long story. I was in Dalmuir library yesterday. For some reason I wanted to check out Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Diaries . As you know Gramsci was leader of the Italian Communist Party. Gramsci writes about how capitalism mutates and appropriates art and literature to establish a cultural hegemony. If that sounds pretty long-winded it’s probably because I don’t understand it either. Gramsci did. And it’s increasingly relevant today. The working...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b8p2/climategate-science-of-a-scandal Our ancestors believed that the sky was round and the earth was square, the sun and all the planets circled the earth. All these things were self-evident. When emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of Cambridge were hacked in 2009 the theory that global warming was a hoax gained credence and the sky really was round and the earth square...

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Below the typeface of David Wilson’s name is the tag ‘The UK’s Leading Criminologist’. Fourteen other books written (or co-written) by Wilson about well-known criminals and criminal justice system are listed inside the cover. It was only when I had neared completion of the book, and the Chapter Theory into Practice: Interview with a Murderer, I realised this was a programme on Channel 4 that I’d watched. Here we had encapsulated everything...