Tam Donnichie was always a welcoming presence. There’s a great photo of him and a couple of the lads in the Drop Inn. Swiggy (2001? RIP) with a moustache. Barry Brennan (2020, RIP). Tam (2024, RIP) his curly black hair retreating to baldness and he wore specs. The sensible one in and out of the photo. Turning to stare at the camera, And the youngish, black-haired Charlie Mac, the insensible one. Eon Brennan, Barry’s older brother, with his arm...

For the next three days (Wednesday, 31st July to Friday, 2nd August) the Kindle version of the very first collection of short stories, featuring the odd pairing of Josiah Oakshott and Archibald Thurble, will be completely FREE . If you've been following the 'Dead Reckoning' series and have been wondering where these characters came from (and what their back story is) then you could do a lot worse than diip into 'A Dubious Undertaking and other...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001z8wc/better-off-dead I’m for assisted dying. What I fear is dementia. I agree with much of what Liz Carr argues. The slippery-slope argument. We live in separate worlds. But we all die. The disabled, like her, in a capitalist economy are costly and don’t die quickly enough for some. Boris Johnson’s comments, while Prime Minister, during Covid-19, ‘Let the bodies pile high,’ related to those older and in...

Follow the Money – How Much Does Britain Cost? (2023) By Paul Johnson The truth is, I like money. Before you raise pitchforks and burning torches in the air and chase me through the village, the reason I like moolah is because I had next to none growing up. Things were so tight as a teenager, I used to buy cigarettes in singles from the corner shop over the road. Life has been better to me since those days of deprivation but, the point is, most...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zby4/janey Janey is of course Jane Godley. The assumption here is many folk will know who you are. Trump, for example. Or ‘Trump is a cunt’. Archive footage shows Janey holding that banner, protesting the moron’s moron when he visited Scotland in 2016 after being elected President. I certainly wasn’t disagreeing with her, then or now. I also thought Thatcher was a cunt. But that didn’t stop Janey and her...

The Zone of Interest was re-published posthumously after the success of the film of the same name. I wrote notes for both. But I’m not sure what I’ve done with them, which is of no interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zone_of_Interest_(film) The film version of the book, directed by Jonathan Glazier is an account of family life. Hedwig Höss (Sandra Hüller) is proud of her family home. She and her five children have everything they need,...

Thank you once again for all the lovely contributions to the site. It's been a really tough Pick this week! Story of the Week goes to the latest chapter of Jane Hyphen's brilliant 'Parcel for You'. This thoughtful and super-imaginative series (which I hope one day we'll see in book form) just gets better and better. This time, the wonderful characters are planning a trip to a festival. If you haven't read the previous chapters, you really don't...

Would you kill yourself? I would. Like many people I’ve talked to that have cared for people with dementia, the retort usually follows along the lines of ‘just shoot me’. Wendy Mitchell has lived with early-onset dementia since her diagnosis in 2014. Her first book was the bestseller, Someone I Used to Know . Break out the bucket list. Do a bit of wing walking. Get real about what life you have remaining. Our brain shrinks as we get older. Our...

Dalmuir Library, Dalmuir Community Centre, Duntocher Road, Clydebank, G81 4RQ Tilly and me went on our bikes to Dalmuir Library. It’s in the old C.E. Centre. The old Dalmuir School, which features in my book Beastie . A library member had ordered a copy. Evonne, the librarian, asked me which category they should label Beastie under. I wasn’t sure. There wasn’t a category for ‘#arseholes I knew’. I suggested Scottish Noir or Tartan Noir. But that...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001sk36/dog-days-dog-days-60minute-version This reminded me of the old BBC Play for Today . Gutsy dramas like Just Another Saturday or Just a Boy’s Game . Here’s the setup. Zoso (Conor McCarron), a Glaswegian beggar in Dundee, mugs another beggar. He steals his guitar, but leaves his donations and also steals the busker’s shoes. He explains, he didn’t want him chasing him. He turns up at his old girlfriend’...