Most Celtic supporters I’ve talked to would be happy another domestic treble, perhaps with a European Cup thrown in for good measure. In Lennie we trust (well kinda). Lennon got us over the line last year, winning the Scottish Cup and the treble. There was a minimum and maximum as there is this year. I’d guess the minimum is a domestic double, Scottish League and one other trophy. In terms of Europe, qualification for the group stage of the...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=85&v=WIvFTrJGWCY This drama-documentary has a fairy-story feel, a story of good triumphing over evil, of before and after the fall. Rape and murder are commonplace. Currently, only four-percent of reported rapes in the United Kingdom, for example, are successfully prosecuted. When Alison Botha was abducted at knife-point in 1994, after dropping her friend off, near her home in South Africa, she...

Amongst the riches on the site this week, two in particular stood out for me from the moment I read them. Story of the Week is Ball Bearing from ice rivers. A funny, reflective tale of a friendship, a fibre optic bear and the dynamics of the office Christmas Party: https://www.abctales.com/story/ice-rivers/ball-bearing Poem of the Week is the stunning Everyone Remembers Everything Eventually, by lavadis. Beautiful, complex, but so easy to just...

I recently read Doug Johnstone’s The Jump . I enjoyed it, so had a look at his back catalogue. In many ways we all write the same story again and again. I liked the Godfather of Scottish noir, William McIlvanney’s Laidlaw series, more for the characters and the Glasgow landscape than his ramshackle plots in which Laidlaw didn’t so much solve the case but tilt the world off its axis, which made him slightly less miserable. That’s Glesgca fer you...

Many apologies for the downtime on the site today. What was supposed to be a very brief bit of maintenance - literally, minutes - got a bit more complicated and so we have been down for most of the day. Thank you for your patience.

“A New Hope” – that was the title of a daily reading forwarded to me today. It followed a special day yesterday for two individuals who, after meeting as colleagues, moved on from their shared employer to different offices, but their communications didn’t end and they eventually became engaged and got married yesterday. The reading today was about ‘lean not on your own understanding’ and it dawned on me that that is exactly what the action of ‘...

The Madness of Prime Minister Johnson So anyway folks, to get back to luck and where we were before being abruptly interrupted by the consensus of opinion, Let’s discuss the resolution of how we live and die. the constitution of the masons. My opinion is to continue the culling, take what was never rightfully ours. The only argument is when to slaughter. But let’s back to luck and the masons, and if the bombs beget to blow. Some say, that after...

Perhaps we should start a book review by stating the obvious about God, everything and nothing. Books are holy to me, a companion to reality as I experience it. Entertainment and ecstasy, from the Greek, meaning a going out of ourselves, while actually staying in with a good book as long as it’s not fake, middle-class wordplay, wankery. Kerry Hudson book is a good book. She is one of us, working class, but I don’t like the title, Lowborn. ‘They...

The critics thought this was wonderful, the public less so - I can see why in this barrowload of hysterical, historical power-struggle vomit. Queen Anne has gone off her nut after none of her 17 babies lived. Lady Sarah Churchill has a lot of power and control over her but step by step Abigail Hill, a dispossessed aristo who enters the house as a maid ousts Sarah off her perch There's a constant atmosphere of sex and violence and sexualised...

Being the fourth part of The Moscow ChroniclesI Follow the link s for Part 1 - Moscow Calling , Part 2 - Taksi! and Part 3 - Night in the City I awoke bright and early the next morning. Well, it was relatively early for me and I’m never all that bright in the morning, but I did my best. I staggered down to the dining room which was somewhat gloomy, which rather matched my mood. The gloom was a consequence of the fact that it was below street...